


Atlantis

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Atlantis, Body Horror, Choices, Dark, Dom/sub, Eventual Levi/Erwin Smith, Eventual Romance, Falling In Love, Fantasy, Fisting, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Inspired By Tumblr, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Master/Pet, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Possessive Behavior, Present Tense, Sexual Content, Sirens, Stockholm Syndrome, Twisted, Underwater, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, but not in the way you think, kind of, mer!win, merman au, minor eruriren. a tiny bit.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 42,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi tries to drown, and in the process, learns how to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chunyunjae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chunyunjae/gifts).



> For chunyunjae from Tumblr. I know this is the most unoriginal title for a merman!AU, but I...cannot think of anything better. Here is my attempt at worldbuilding.

Levi is, and always has been, unlucky in life. He had liked to joke that he had probably been born on the wrong side of the bed, so his whole life up to that point had probably been a work of misfortune on a cosmic scale, the stars and planets and, hell, probably the galaxies, too, aligning themselves to essentially fuck him over. His mishaps had followed him ever since he had been a child, trying to climb the plum tree in his backyard; he had shattered his arm in three places, and even now on particularly wet days, he found that he was unable to even pick up a camera because of the shooting pains that would stab through his wrist if he so much as tried to bend it. 

It was a problematic condition, given that Levi was currently employed as a nature photographer for National Geographic. Perhaps the only good stroke of luck he'd had in his life was when he'd been scouted by one of the magazine's agents, a well-meaning giant of a man by the name of Mike Zacharius, who had just happened to be wandering aimlessly around the corridors of one of the exhibition halls on the campus of the university Levi had been attending at the time. He had seen one of Levi's photographs, a black and white picture of a hummingbird dipping its beak into the pitcher of a gloriously red hibiscus, the only colour that had been present in the picture. The hummingbird's wings had been caught with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second so it had appeared frozen in mid-flight, its needle-thin beak dipping in between the petals with an energy that looked almost frenetically sexual. 

Mike had, if he could be believed, smelled greatness on Levi when Levi had come in for the interview, albeit begrudgingly, two months later. He had walked out with a job, the makings of a career, and the promise of a steady salary and health insurance benefits. It had been as good a job as anything, and because Levi had at that time been in the awkward position of someone who has just graduated but who has as of yet no idea what they want to do with the rest of their lives, he accepted without thinking too closely about what the job might entail. 

It hadn't been bad in the beginning, certainly not. He had been flown out to exotic places: Peru, the Amazon Jungle, Siberia, with a team of other nature photographers. He had had the opportunity to hold his breath, silent and still in the long sweeping grass of Southeast Asia, capturing the sleek, stalking movements of a tiger through his camera lens. He had watched, with amazement, flocks of brightly colored birds erupting from their nests overhead; he had been able to ignore the way his shirt had stuck to his back as he took photo after photo of the riotous color flitting through the canopies of jungles in South America. The world was beautiful, and Levi finally felt as though he'd found a place in it from behind the glass lens of his new Nikon D3300 camera. 

And then she had come along. 

Her name was Petra Ral, and at 5'2", she clocked in at the shortest person Levi had ever found himself attracted to. He had been smitten, almost instantly, when Mike knocked on his open office (well, cubicle, if he was being well and truly honest with himself) door and told him that he would be receiving a cubicle-mate. She had come in, face obscured by a towering heap of personal belongings that she had just barely managed to fit into a white cardboard box, which she plopped down heavily on the half of his desk that Levi had grudgingly allocated for her. The weight had toppled Levi's coffee over, and she had spent the rest of the morning rearranging her things and apologizing profusely and offering to buy Levi another latte. 

At that point in his life, though he had had the opportunity to travel the world, to capture striking images of beauty in split seconds of perfection, Levi Ackerman found himself dazzled by the way he could find his reflection, clarity and lucidity, in the amber pools of Petra's eyes. 

But his birthright caught up with him again, and he found that he was no longer being invited to assignments, his Nikon growing dusty from disuse. Granted, Mike had been bringing in new people steadily over the course of the last few years, a new crop of people who could stand to wade through leech-infested marshes for hours for the perfect shot, a new group of college graduates who still had stars in their eyes and who were not above carrying thirty pounds of camera equipment with them wherever they went. At first, Levi had been grateful, because these were parts of the job description that he didn't particularly care for. 

And then he had gotten bored, tedium settling in. He was only twenty-seven, and he still hadn't managed to get rid of the wanderlust and world curiosity that infects us all, burrows deep into our skin at a young age, and can only be alleviated with the application of ponderous fantasy novels, semesters abroad, or heartfelt confessions that seem foolish in hindsight. Perhaps a combination of all three. 

The morning of February 14th found Levi Ackerman standing in a florist's, elbow to elbow with several other desperate looking working professionals who had forgotten to set reminders on their smart phones for the momentous occasion. After managing to dig out enough loose change from the crevices of his leather messenger bag, succeeding in angering the queue of other impatient men behind him, Levi had exited the florist's, a violently pink bouquet of roses and chrysanthemums clutched in his hand, and he spent the three blocks' walk to the office nervously going over possible situations in his mind. 

If all went well, Levi thought to himself, he and Petra would be an item by the evening; he would propose to her in a helicopter ride over Jakarta where they would be assigned to take photographs of the local wildlife, they would get married in Hawaii, barefoot on the sand, dolphins jumping in the background of the wedding portrait, happy to commemorate their union. 

Misfortune had long legs, and had sprinted to catch up with Levi's shadow as if to compensate for lagging behind during the few glorious years he had had. Petra hadn't come into work that day, and when he'd popped his head into Mike's office to ask him where Petra was, Mike had informed him that Petra had taken the day off as personal time, "because her boyfriend is visiting from France or something like that." Levi had barely managed to get back to his desk, where he'd promptly swept the flowers, in a fit of anger, into his trash bin, scattering petals all over the cubicle. 

Levi was, and is, unlucky in life. His career as a nature photographer is mediocre at best, he is currently two months behind on rent because of his lack of motivation to find someone to rent out the other match box bedroom in his cracker box apartment, and he has just been informed that the woman he loves has another, of course she does, because she is far too beautiful and too smart and too kind to not have someone to chart the constellations in her eyes. 

Levi is twenty-seven years old, and it seems that the world stretches out before him, lonely and cold in its abandonment and general ignorance of his existence. 

He had hopped into his car, a broken down Nissan whose engine wheezed whenever he tried to speed up past 30 miles an hour, and he made his slow puttering way to the sea to drown. It was violent, it was unprecedented, but drunk off cheap Franzia from a box he'd found in the hallway closet, fueled with desperate energy, Levi had thought that, at the very least, he'd be in the newspapers, probably on page 3 or 4, his death cast in dark ink over grey newsprint, to say "I was here, I was alive, I existed." 

The night of February 14th finds Levi Ackerman staring out across the black expanse of the ocean, listening to the surf crashing against the hard packed sand of the shore. The world is mighty, cruel in its beauty, and as Levi takes his steps forward, shoes and knees and chest soaking through with cold and wet, sharp shooting pains jabbing up his wrist again, he thinks that perhaps he is unworthy of inhabiting such a place. 

* * *

 

And then he wakes up, body rolling itself over and gagging up seawater that splatters sickly on the wet stone floor beneath his palms. Once he has finished heaving, and the world has stopped swaying madly around him, Levi slowly gets to his knees, to his feet, looking around cautiously. His wrist still aches something fierce, and he rubs it absentmindedly, the heel of his right hand skittering across the bare expanse of his thigh before he pauses in confusion. He remembers wearing denim, black skinny jeans in a throwback to his university days, a pair of trainers that he'd adored because they were soft and well-worn-in, a Nirvana T-shirt that had been washed to cotton silkiness through many loads of laundry. Surely he'd been wearing them when he waded into the sea, if only to die at the height of fashion. 

He thinks that perhaps he is already dead, that this is just the standard way you enter the next world, as naked and vulnerable as you entered this one. But if this is Heaven, it is nothing like he's imagined from the knowledge given in books or fairy tales. If this is Hell, he thinks that perhaps it's a bit too cold and wet. 

The only sounds are the small puffs of his lungs, still working despite his best efforts to disable them, the slick of water lapping up against stone, lonely drips of sea from stalactites whose shadows he can just make out, hanging precariously down from the ceiling, almost close enough to grasp. 

And then, a voice. 

It is deep, soothing, and Levi thinks that it is God, it is Satan, it is some divinity come to ask what exactly they should do about him. 

"You tried to drown," it says. It is not a question, but the tone of the statement is far from accusatory. It is merely there, a statement of fact, perhaps the slightest hint of amusement at his human folly. 

"I did," he agrees, cautiously, turning in the general direction of the voice. He can see nothing except the dimly lit darkness of the water in front of him. 

"Humans cannot live without the air." Levi wants to laugh, hysterical, because now he is sure he is dead. The world is vast and beautiful, but nothing like this exists in its limited scope of creativity, of that Levi is sure. 

"You say that like you're not human." He hates the knife edge of desperation and panic in his voice; he had wished to die with grace and effortlessness, sliding from one world to the next with a certain finesse that is severely lacking in this situation. 

A splash. Two. A murky shadow drags itself out of the water, barely visible other than the gleam of moonlight on what look like scales, and Levi watches in horror and fascination as it drags itself with wet scraping sounds towards his feet. He backs away uncertainly, his footsteps loud, too loud in the silence, and he wants to cry in hopelessness when his shoulder blades come into contact with hard ridges of rock. Nothing even close to this has figured into his dreams for the future, and he finds a seed of anger growing in his heart at whoever is in control of his destiny, because Levi Ackerman, twenty-seven years old, feels that he should at least be able to control the method of his death. 

"I was, once," the shadow says finally, as it stops at a point approximately two feet from Levi's legs. Levi tries to squirm back, tries to make himself disappear, and when all that fails, holds his breath and makes himself as still as possible in the futile hopes of avoiding detection. "But tell me, human, why do you want to drown?" 

Levi has thought about this question for ages, has morbidly contemplated even in younger years about the best method of self-execution. He had decided that having his body rocked slowly and gently to a watery grave might be the most peaceful, his flesh and bone sinking to the sea to become dinner for fishes, and he shyly tells the shadow this. It laughs, and its rich sound sends tingles racing down Levi's spine that has nothing to do with his current state of nudity. 

There is the soft chiming sound of bells, the clatter of wood and shells clicking together, and a soft light infuses the room with gold, corals blazing bioluminescent from their jutting positions in the rock walls around him. Levi gasps as it becomes revealed, fingers scrabbling at the unyielding rock wall behind him for purchase. It is a man, and it is not; it is a fish, a shark, a whale, and it is not. 

It runs a hand through its wet blonde hair, long and curling over his forehead in slick strands, grins up at him with blue eyes the piercing color of the sky, and says simply, "My name is Erwin. It is a pleasure to meet you." 

Levi wakes up two hours later, his bare limbs cradled in the smooth slick warmth of a massive blue tail, and a nasty bump on the back of his head from where he hit it in his fall as he fainted.


	2. Sapphire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus Christ when I said rating was subject to change I didn't mean that I should change it in the 2nd chapter

Upon waking, Levi's first thought is that he has well and truly died, or that he is at the very least in some hyperbaric chamber in the psychiatric ward, high off of the purest oxygen, his addled mind hallucinating phantasmic. His second thought is that his imagination is more creative than he's ever given it credit for. 

The corals studded in the rock walls are still glowing softly, light just enough for Levi to examine his surroundings. He appears to be in a cave of some sort, stalactites dripping water onto the smooth wet stone floor below, small puddles of water in the crevices of the rock gleaming dark. If he turns his head all the way to the right, he can just make out the faint motion of water lapping against the stones, the sound slick and wet and soothing. He is coated in warmth, limbs wrapped in what may possibly be the smoothest of blankets, and the sound starts to rock him back into his dreams before he is rudely jolted out of them by the sudden, intense ache of hunger gnawing a hole into his stomach. He is hungry, starving, his stomach making the most embarrassing noises that, for a moment, he forgets to be humiliated by his nudity. 

"You need food." 

Levi startles, turns his head back to look up into piercing blue, into sapphire eyes, and he finds that he is beginning to lose himself in the azure irises that look back down at him. He is drowning, but not in the ocean of his choice; he is suffocating, body responding treacherous to its saviour, a traitor to his mind. 

The man - if he can call him that, at least from the waist up, if he recalls correctly - has blonde hair that turns darker at its roots, dry now and combed across his forehead. His nose is aquiline, the bridge narrow and shaded well, lips a pale pink that deepens to coral towards the center. His eyes are lovely, and Levi cannot even begin to think of all the shades of blue they hold in their depths, does not have enough words to describe the color. In fact, the man, if he could call him that, would have been downright gorgeous, scary in his beauty, had he not had such bushy eyebrows. As such, his flaw gives him substance, makes him real, and it is with a shock and a hint of bitter disappointment that Levi accepts that he is in fact, very much still alive. 

"Yes, I'm hungry," he says, eyes tracing down the column of the man's neck - oh God, what is his name? Irvine, Irvin? Levi vaguely remembers something of the sort. His gaze pauses on the fleshy slits that line his throat, skin shredded but unharmed; no blood seeps out from the gashes, and upon closer inspection, they flutter faintly in time with the rise and fall of his chest. Levi's gaze traces down his chest, sculpted and well-defined, down, down, down to where his own legs disappear into a coil of gleaming sapphire. His eyes cut back up to the man's waist, and his hand reaches out, seemingly of its own accord, to trace the seam where softly tanned skin meets aquamarine. It is then that he notices how small his hand looks in comparison; he had always been small-statured, fine-boned, but this...being, Levi supposes he can't call him a man any longer - makes him look positively childlike. With a top-to-bottom glance that he's perfected over several months of nature photography, he estimates that it is perhaps around a staggering ten feet long. 

When he looks back up, it is smiling at him, displaying a mouth of razor teeth so sharp he wonders how it can stand to close its mouth, without fear of biting away at its gums. 

"My name is  Erwin ," it reminds him, gently. "You never quite got around to introducing yourself." 

"I'm....I'm Levi," he says, after a pause during which he scrabbles frantically to come up with his own name. "I'm a nature photographer," he blurts out without prompting, because he has grown accustomed to introducing himself by his name and job title. 

"A nature photographer?" Erwin looks amused. "What exactly does this entail?" 

Levi wants to slap himself. He will wake up in another four hours, to the unbearable buzzing of an alarm clock and his landlord shouting through the door that he will be evicted if he doesn't pay his overdue rent this instant. erwin will be gone, and he will return to his desk job at the National Geographic offices without further ado; Petra will still not love him, will probably never love him past the point of platonic friendship, and he snuggles into Erwin's forgiving warmth almost unconsciously, praying to stay in the dream a little while longer. 

"I took pictures of animals," Levi murmured against Erwin's skin. When he inhales, it tastes vaguely like the sea and something else that Levi cannot begin to name. "So that people could look at them and see how beautiful the world is." Even to his own ears, this answer sounds weak and vague. 

"Do you think the world is beautiful?" Erwin asks. Levi can feel the vibrations of his voice through his lips. 

"I thought so," he mumbles. Past tense. 

"What happened to change your mind?" One of Erwin's hands maneuvers its way beneath Levi's chin, tilts his face upward. Levi can feel the webbing between Erwin's fingers, slick and ridged in contrast to smooth skin. 

"Nothing goes right for me," Levi admits, his face coloring as Erwin's thumb traces slowly around the swell of his lower lip. Studying, examining, much like Levi had been doing earlier. "I'm unlucky. Behind on rent, behind on a career, behind in love, everything, really." 

Erwin's hand traces its way down to Levi's neck, rubbing at the smooth, unridged skin there curiously. Levi holds his breath, his pulse stuttering beneath Erwin's fingers. 

"Are you nervous?" Erwin asks, thumb pressed lightly against Levi's heartbeat. "Are you scared of me?" 

"Yes. No. I don't know." Levi's voice comes out in barely a whisper. 

"Why?"

"You could kill me." Levi wants to laugh the instant the words are out in the open. Absurdity. 

"Did you not want to die?" Erwin asks, a laugh coloring his voice deep. "What difference would it make, between drowning and this?" His hand is huge, Levi realizes, easily able to press long fingers against the nape of his neck while his thumb rests in the hollow of Levi's throat. "I would argue that this might be a better way to go" - with a hint of pressure that has Levi's breath catching - "since I could choke you in the sweetest way possible, so smoothly and lovelily you wouldn't know you were dying." 

Levi swallows, reaching up to flick Erwin's hand away. "Let's just say you've piqued my curiosity enough for me to stay around for a bit longer. I've never - well, the world's never - seen anything like you." 

"That's as it should be. Sirens aren't meant to be seen," Erwin says gently, his voice melting soft through Levi's soul, and he thinks of the books he's read, fantasies and children's tales about the sirens of the sea, voices so beautiful that they sang sailors to their deaths. He thinks he can begin to understand what the stories mean, because he finds that he never wants Erwin to stop talking, wants to hear his voice go on forever, erasing his past, erasing his cracker box apartment and his cluttered office desk and lovely, sweet Petra, who probably isn't even aware that Levi is missing, probably doesn't even care too much. 

"You need food," Erwin murmurs again, when Levi's stomach lets out a loud growl, angry at being ignored. "You need fresh water and warmth and fire and air. I had forgotten how many things humans require to sustain themselves." The fleshy slits on the sides of his neck flare and flutter with his words, creamy skin and crimson internals, and Levi reaches a curious hand up to trace them with a finger, wants to see if his hand will come away bloodstained. Erwin catches his wrist in a broad palm. A shiver trails up Levi's spine at the way Erwin can encircle his wrist so effortlessly, the most comforting, the most dangerous, the most erotic of fetters. 

Erwin laughs, a low, deep sound that has Levi wanting to burrow himself beneath Erwin's skin, to integrate flawless and unbroken. 

"Your...ah, your sea cucumber is awake," Erwin says, and Levi is confused for a moment before Erwin releases his hand, trailing a long finger down the length of Levi's bare torso, his waist, to the place where he has become hard and aching without even knowing it. He is absolutely mortified, face flaming hot when Erwin wraps a hand around him, skin and webbing swallowing up rosy flesh almost entirely. 

"Don't, don't touch that," he huffs, biting at his lip to stifle his gasps. It is certainly different, a change from the lonely comforts of a bottle of lotion and his own palm, and his body, traitorous, arches into the touch. 

"I had forgotten how enjoyable this was," Erwin murmurs, his voice holding a note of fascination. Levi peeps out from beneath his eyelids to find that Erwin is watching him with awe, watching the way Levi's cock weeps sticky across the pads of his fingers. His tail sweeps lazily around Levi's calves, smooth against his thighs, holding him steady and secure even as he trembles and writhes in Erwin's grasp. 

Levi startles as the knot of heat wriggling in the pit of his belly suddenly tightens, suddenly becomes unraveled, and he tastes blood as he bites on his lip to muffle his sobs as he jolts upward into Erwin's palm, as much as Erwin will allow him to. Once he opens his eyes again, once the world comes into focus, he finds Erwin examining his palm with curiosity, and he wishes the world would swallow him when Erwin brings his palm to his mouth, cherry tongue peeking out to taste. 

"Just like a sea cucumber," Erwin affirms, and Levi buries his face in his hands. "Ah, but you've hurt yourself," he says suddenly, tone concerned, the thumb of his other hand swiping across Levi's lower lip and coming away with a tiny streak of blood. He stares at it for a while, lips pressed tightly together, before shaking his head and rubbing his thumb against the stone beneath them. "Perhaps you should be more careful next time. I will get food for you," he adds, as Levi's stomach all but screams at him. 

"I can't eat raw fish," Levi mumbles from between his arms, which are still folded over his face. "I'll get sick and then I'll really die." 

"That would be a shame," Erwin agrees, his tail unwrapping Levi's legs, freeing him as he slithers off the rock. "I will find some way to cook it for you." 

There is a splash, soft and barely audible, and when Levi finally uncovers his eyes, he finds only the gentle ripples of the water against the stone. 

 


	3. Cerulean

By his calculations, Levi has been here, wherever here is, for about a week. He has always kept atrocious sleeping habits, so he is unsure about how reliable his judgment is, because without the sun, he can no longer discern his evenings from his mornings, and he falls asleep whenever his eyes demand to rest, whenever the heavy drag of slumber pulls him down into its depths. He has already lost track of Erwin's comings and goings, has learned not to be startled by the sudden splashes of water that precede Erwin's arrival. He comes and leaves as he pleases, a bag woven of a green material that looks suspiciously like seaweed slung over his shoulder. His arrivals mean food, mean comfort, mean warmth, and Levi has become conditioned to anticipate them, to love them and wait for them with bated breath. 

Over the past week, Erwin has ferried in driftwood, all manner of fish, large handfuls of sea moss that he helps Levi arrange into a sort of nest that he climbs into to sleep. The stack of driftwood in the back of the cave grows higher, starts to dry, and Levi grins absurdly wide when he strikes smooth stone against smooth stone to create a spark that ignites a small pile of wood shavings he's created. Erwin watches from where he is coiled into the sea moss, tail flicking absentmindedly as Levi crouches close to the fire, holding out his hands and soaking in the delicious heat. 

"Fire," Erwin muses, and Levi looks over his shoulder to find beauty in the way the light flickers over Erwin's face, casting human shadow over the planes of his cheekbones, a light brave and burning across his features in a manner that the bioluminescent corals fail to do. "You can use this to cook." His words are slow, measured, rolled out of his mouth as though each one has been judged and deemed satisfactory before being released. 

"Yes," Levi replies, rather cheerfully. "Not that I don't like the fish you've been bringing me," he goes to add hastily. "I just figure this is more convenient for you." 

"It is," Erwin agrees, stretching languidly. The shadows jump on the cave walls, more beast than human, large and overwhelming. The darkness Levi casts is nonexistent in comparison. "The nearest hydrothermal vents are miles away." 

Of all the places he has been sent during his time at National Geographic, Levi has never been to photograph anything at a depth lower than mere snorkeling will allow. The ocean floor, the deep sea, fascinates and terrifies him with its darkness and its mysteries, Erwin, apparently, being one of them. But Levi has already resigned himself to death; it is a reality that all humans hurtle towards, some quicker than others, eager to race to the finish line to see what lies beyond. He has already resigned himself to death, has shaken off his fears, and he finds the curiosity of his nine-year-old self again. He has nothing left to lose, and Erwin has everything to offer. Levi resolves to ask Erwin to take him to see what no human has seen before, to explore the world that Erwin inhabits, to drown there, blinded by beauty and awe, to become food for the fishes as he had expressed. He thinks about Erwin consuming him, tearing away his flesh shred by shred with razor teeth, gobbling down scraps of skin and limb and bone, and the thought is more erotic than he would like to admit. 

He hisses, jerking his hand back, the burn on his thumb from a stray flicker of flame jolting him out of his thoughts and daydreams. Erwin's arm is there, hand clasped around Levi's wrist, drawing him away from the fire. 

"You seem to be quite adept at hurting yourself," Erwin murmurs, all but dragging Levi into the curve of his body with a raw vigor, barely concealed strength, steel wrapped in the silk of his skin. Levi holds his breath, hushed, as Erwin examines his hand where the skin has already started to turn red and swollen. Erwin presses kisses to the affected area, cool and soothing, and Levi finds himself entranced by the sheer proximity of teeth to flesh, intoxicated on the sheer danger of the event. Cerulean flickers up to his face to gauge his reaction, and, satisfied that Levi is sufficiently consumed, returns attention back to his hand. Levi watches, breathless, as Erwin's tongue, sandpaper smooth, flutters across his skin, dragging gently to sooth and kiss and taste. It is the closest he's gotten to intimacy without eroticism, and he finds himself weak at the way Erwin has managed to so effortlessly captivate him, ensnare him. He has taken up residence at the forefront of Levi's mind, has forcibly evicted Levi's worldly concerns about his career and his apartment and Petra, lovely, sweet Petra, the color of whose eyes Levi cannot even begin to recall. She exists, in a crevice of his mind, he is sure, but Erwin has inundated him, invaded his thoughts with a slick smooth subtlety that Levi hadn't been able to anticipate, that Levi wasn't sure he would have even wanted to prevent. 

Mind follows body, and Levi finds that he has come to accept Erwin as his saving grace, his avenging angel, his second chance. Erwin has come to dominate his universe, limited as it is, and he finds himself obsessed, possessed. The siren call of cerulean beckons to him, and he falls in headlong. 

"Why?" he asks, when he can finally force the word out past the knot in his throat. "Why are you doing this?" 

Erwin looks up at him, taking his kisses away from Levi's skin. He wants to reach out, wants to feel velvet against his hand again. "You burned yourself," Erwin says, slowly, eyes narrowing slightly in confusion. "I am just trying to help." 

"No," Levi says, shaking his head. "I meant, why are you keeping me alive like this? Surely I'm only just another added responsibility to, er, whatever it is you do out there," he says, with a vague wave to the unseen direction of outside. "Why are you going to the trouble, when you don't have any obligation to me?"

"I do have an obligation to you," Erwin replies, picking Levi's hand up again and laving kisses over his wrist, his veins, tongue depressing delicate over where Levi's pulse has started to flutter erratic and staccato. "I saved you. You are a responsibility I have chosen to take on, and it would be rather horrible of me if I were to negate that by, say, letting you starve to death." 

"Why did you save me?" Levi asks, mesmerized by the way Erwin is sucking splotches into the skin of his inner arm. His teeth skim, needles, across Levi's flesh, and he fights back the urge to press up, to prick himself against Erwin. 

Erwin pulls away to look at him again, lifts a large hand up to trace the contours of Levi's face, memorizing by touch and feel and texture. Levi brings a hand up to compare, takes secret delight from the fact that his fingers only seem able to reach the base of Erwin's. He is not in control, has never been, and the physical affirmation of this makes him giddy with his eager submission. 

"It is because you remind me of someone I used to love. Someone on the surface," Erwin clarifies at Levi's puzzled expression. "When I was still like you." 

"Oh?" Levi's ears perk up at this. This is the first time Erwin has talked about his life on the surface before, and he has to tamp down the jealousy, unwanted and uncalled for, that rises quick and hot up his throat at the idea that another may have monopolized Erwin's attentions for even a brief period of his life. 

"She was beautiful," Erwin muses, and Levi's heart seizes at the pronoun. "She had eyes like sea glass, a voice like seashells calling for the ocean." Erwin smiles a bit at the memory. 

"What happened?" Levi asks, pain leaching amber through his body. He is sure Erwin can taste it, from the stutters of his heartbeat beneath his lips. "Why aren't you with her?" 

"I loved her so much that I lost track of myself," Erwin replies, eyes focused on a point in the distance, lost in the past. "She told me to jump, and I did. And when she told me she loved another, I suppose I came to drown as well. Much like you," he points out gently, stroking back strands of hair from Levi's forehead. 

"You suppose?" Levi asks, incredulous. "Don't you remember?" 

"Not really," Erwin says, smiling now. "It has been so long ago, years and years and years. It takes time to realize the unimportance of seemingly grand events. Love fades, and it endures as well. You" - this, with a forefinger tracing delicately over the curve of Levi's ribs - "intrigue me. When I found you, you were being swept away in the tides, but you looked so peaceful, so lovely in your self-imposed death, that I decided I wanted to save you, to have you, to possess you." He all but hisses the last words, and Levi shivers in surrender. 

Erwin's tail flicks over his bare knees, and Levi finds himself once again reminded of how different they are. It is impossible, unfeasible, implausible, and yet, and yet...Erwin was a man, too, once, by his own admittance. 

"It would be much simpler if you would come with me," Erwin admits, tail wriggling underneath Levi and coiling itself around his waist, strong and secure and warmer than any love Levi has yet to experience in his twenty-seven years. "This place is a very small part of this universe, and it seems a shame to stay here all the time." 

But, at heart, Levi is still a human, his body still straining to survive and sustain itself with its limited means and its dependency. He cannot make that commitment, cannot even begin to think about the implications of Erwin's words are. 

"I could make you, you know." Erwin's tail wraps itself over, around Levi's waist, his hips, his legs, pressing them close together, glimmering blue swallowing up Levi's skin until there is nothing visible when Levi looks down. "I could ask you, like this" - and Erwin's mouth is next to his face, sharp teeth nipping delicate at the seashell curve of Levi's ear, whispering soft and steady and commanding - "and you would say _yes, Erwin, I want you, I need you, I love you and I beg you to change me_." 

A shudder tingles its way down Levi's spine, but he cannot bring himself to push Erwin away. 

"I know," Levi murmurs when he has managed to find his voice again. "And I am eternally grateful that you're letting me have that choice."

"Hmm," Erwin murmurs, and Levi finds himself searching for salvation in the way he can feel the vibrations through Erwin's chest. "I may get impatient, my darling, sweet, beautiful Levi. You would be wise to remember that you are also gorgeous when you drown." 

Levi is able to ignore the thinly veiled threat in Erwin's words; the claim of possession, blatant and clear, wipes it away clean and neat. He is Erwin's, he is possessed, and, for the first time in his twenty-seven years, Levi feels, inexplicably, as though he belongs. 


	4. Aquamarine

"What is it like?" Levi asks him one lazy night, or what he presumes is night. Erwin is coiled around him, his tail the smoothest and most comforting of blankets over Levi's naked limbs. Erwin's tail never fails to mesmerize Levi, solid coils of muscle lightly veiled beneath a sapphire that he is always amazed never leaches into the cream of his skin. Guilty, Levi wishes that it would, wishes that it would leak and leave a stain across his legs, his calves, his inner thighs, streak blue all over him and stake a claim that he could touch. There is a soft drip drip dripping of water from the stalactites that limn the ceiling of the cave, and Levi counts the droplets absentmindedly, his clock, his timepiece, eternities splashing into oblivion while Erwin hums into his shoulder and sends electric vibrations tingling up each and every vertebrae. 

"What is what like, my sweet, lovely boy?" Erwin asks, and Levi wants. Aches. Burns. He is anything but sweet, anything but lovely. He is fickle, weak-hearted, weak-minded, weak-bodied, and Erwin is a physical manifestation of his antithesis. Levi is twenty-seven, and he has never been addressed this way in his life. It is new, unfamiliar, and yet, stunningly appropriate. 

He has long ago thrown concerns for his nudity by the wayside of his attention. His clothes had been shredded to scraps long ago, presumably from when Erwin tore them off his limp form, and he still occasionally finds a tatter of cotton lapping up against the rocks. 

_ "I was curious to see what you looked like," Erwin had said, when Levi had first confronted him about it. He had been younger, foolish, his eyesight muddied with self-consciousness that he has long forgone. Erwin's gaze has made him beautiful, has unmade and remolded him, and the scraps of cotton he finds now, threads of denim and polyester, are but remnants of a quickly fading past that he can barely recall.  _

His life is divided neatly into two parcels, into Before Erwin and After Erwin, and he finds that the Levi Ackerman of the past has drowned and been reborn. Reincarnated anew, and he ushers in the new millennia of his life with reverence. 

"The places you go when you are not with me," Levi murmurs, his eyelids heavy, his words slurry with drowsiness. The cavern is dark, the bioluminescent corals unable to illuminate the space with their dim reds and pinks and violets. Perhaps this is what it is like, being unborn, Levi thinks sleepily to himself, the gentle rhythm of Erwin's breathing matching the throb of his heartbeat. He is drunk off the warmth, a fetus rolling silver and sleepy in the cradle of its mother's womb, as he turns, motions languid and long and lazy, to press open-mouthed kisses against Erwin's chest. "Talk me to sleep."

"So demanding," Erwin says, a gentle laugh in his voice. "It is impossible to describe in words. But perhaps you will come and see them with me, one day in the future." 

Levi blinks slowly, drugged with fatigue. What Erwin suggests is surely impossible, he thinks to himself. They are nothing alike, and Levi cannot live without the air. And yet. 

And yet...

Erwin's very existence is a testament to the impossibility of the world, the improbable, violent beauty of nature, and Levi knows that, without a doubt, what Erwin suggests is not unimaginable. Levi knows that, without a doubt, that his life hangs, a tendril of thready balance, from the cradle of Erwin's hands; without a doubt, without a moment of hesitation, Levi would drown, suffocate, asphyxiate himself at the first word of Erwin's command. 

The Levi from Before Erwin had a love, treasured a girl with honey hair and a laugh like wind chimes, but the Levi from After Erwin can no longer recall her name or the shape of her mouth. 

"Try," he whispers, and for a moment, he thinks Erwin does not hear. "Please."

Erwin shifts, allowing Levi to pillow his head in the curve of Erwin's arm, warm and yielding and solid. His other hand comes up, gently traces the swell of Levi's lower lip. Levi's tongue flickers out, of its own accord, tasting the sea and sweetness. 

"Outside this cave," Erwin murmurs, his voice a susurrus, soothing, the surf breaking on a calm day, "the entrance is paved with sea grass, long and green and uncut." Levi curls into the cradle of Erwin's grasp, fetal nautilus, protected and dependent. "Fish of all sorts come to play, darting in and out of the strands, a rainbow of color that you have never seen before, blues and greens and bright yellows and everything in between. They greet me like old friends, and I am sure they would be more than delighted to see you. They would be cautious, at first, they're shy around newcomers, but then they would flock around you and nibble at your skin curiously, like this." Erwin lowers his mouth to the curve of Levi's ear, mouths gently at it with his lips, and a slow shiver traces its way down Levi's spine. 

"This cave is not too far below the surface," Erwin continues, "so there is plenty of light to see by in the daytime. It flickers through the water, aquamarine bright and then slowly, slowly, close your eyes, deep and dark." Levi's eyes drift closed at the words, eyelids flickering, struggling to stay awake. "The ocean floor here is smooth and sandy, with plenty of sea cucumbers" - a smile that Levi is too tired to acknowledge - "starfish, hermit crabs. Tiny fish. They are so small, pet, just like you. Schools of them, all neat and together, and the sunlight flashes off their scales when they turn, like...what is the term? Those things you look into to assess your own vain conception of beauty?" He nudges Levi gently, and Levi jolts out of the doze he was falling into. 

"Mirrors," he mumbles. "I think you're talking about mirrors." 

"Yes," Erwin agrees, carding long fingers through Levi's hair, soft, gentle caresses that have him falling asleep before he can even close his eyes. "Mirrors. The sunlight flashes off their scales like millions of tiny mirrors. But you don't need those, do you? You are so gorgeous already." Levi sighs softly as Erwin massages his scalp, nuzzling up into the touch. His body fears, because Erwin's hand is large enough to press and push and crush the fragile calcium of his skull, and his body trusts, pressing and pushing and crushing itself up into the touch. 

"What else? There are plenty of corals on the ocean floor here, pink and orange and violet, flowers and florets blinking open and closed in the current as they eat. Many types of fish make their homes in the reefs, darting in and out of the colorful branches, quicksilver and lightning." Beneath his closed eyelids, Levi finds that he can almost see what Erwin is describing. "There are the lionfish, striped with maroon and cream, their combs spiky and long. Dangerous, and beautiful at the same time."

"Like you," Levi breathes, mind addled, the outlines of his words blurred. Erwin laughs, the sound wrapping around Levi, entrancing, mesmerizing, infiltrating his soul. 

"I am flattered," Erwin says, "that you think of me like that. I suppose it is true. But I will never hurt you, Levi." The way he says his name has Levi finding new meanings, new nuances, new emphasis in the syllables of his birthright. "Not unless you ask me to." Erwin's words spark embers into Levi's heart, furthering the depth of his obsession. Surely it is impossible, surely he has no command over Erwin and his actions, but Erwin has given him that control, and Levi's head reels with the knowledge. 

"Sometimes there are turtles," Erwin continues, his voice returning to soft melodic rhythms. "Huge, green, shells smooth and rough with the cracks of their lifetime. You can read their history in the scars they display proudly on their backs, in the way their dark eyes look at you. I have been bitten by more than a few," he admits, drawing one of Levi's hands to his ribs, where his palm encounters a patch of silvery smooth skin. He rubs, absentmindedly, limbs heavy. "Wise, beyond belief, they know secrets that even I have not yet discovered." 

"Manta rays, too, spreading wings velvet dark to cast long shadows over the ocean floor. They fly gracefully, beating in perfect harmony with the ebb and flow of the waves."

The ebb and flow of Erwin's syllables rocks Levi gently into his dreams, intoxicating narcotic, spiraling dizzy downward into sleep. 

"Deeper now, darling." Erwin's voice is barely a whisper, and Levi finds himself succumbing to his dreams, narrated by Erwin's voice. Once his breathing has smoothed out, deep and slow and steady, once Erwin is sure he is fully asleep, he continues. "Deeper it is dark. Cold. Deeper, there are monsters that use lanterns to guide you home to their waiting jaws, use their false promises of comfort and warmth to hurt you and bite you and rip the flesh from your bones with unforgiving teeth."

The words burrow themselves into Levi's ears, burying themselves deep in his subconscious. 

"Deeper still, lovely Levi, you will find me," Erwin whispers, his voice barely audible over the drip drip drips of water from the ceiling's stalactites. Levi mumbles in his sleep, and Erwin smiles, razor teeth bright and sharp, as he cradles Levi close to his chest and closes his eyes. 


	5. Cyan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may as well just include 'Stockholm Syndrome' in the tags because as several of you have pointed out, there is, to some extent, a certain degree of Stockholm Syndrome in this (even though that wasn't my intention when I originally wrote it, the story has developed a mind of its own)
> 
> edit: The thing with [freshwater reserves beneath the ocean floor](http://science.time.com/2013/12/09/immense-freshwater-reserves-discovered-beneath-ocean-floor/) is a real thing.

Levi often wakes up cold, his back chilly, Erwin's leaching warmth gone. He usually pats around behind him, heels of his hands pressing against the bed of sea moss and lichen that Erwin has gathered in large bagfuls for his comfort. The mosses spring back to their shape, spongy and elastic, and the depression that Erwin's body leaves behind is just the shadow of a hollow in the softness. It is a dangerous sort of limbo that he exists in, caught between one world and the next, and Levi spends his days coaxing soft embers to life, holding his hands out and warming himself by the flames that lick up small splinters of driftwood and dried bits of seaweed. He eats when he is hungry, chewing strips of smoked fish that he lays out in a hollow bit of coral, crunchy and salty and charred from where he is prone to dropping the entire thing in the coals. He drinks when he is thirsty, dipping the smooth bowl of a conch shell into a watertight bag Erwin has woven from long strands of sea grass during lazy nights, his voice reverberating through Levi's chest as he tells him about the wonders that lie outside. 

He does so now, lifting the smooth delicate shell to his lips, allowing fresh cold water, only a tinge of salt, to glide easily down his throat. He had been surprised when Erwin had grasped his chin between the fingers of one hand, tilting back his head, pressing the shell to his lips. The water was cold, clean, the sweetest he had ever tasted, and he had asked Erwin how it was possible, weren't they in the sea?

_ "It's just like humans, to discount the existence of something because they have always been told that it isn't real," Erwin had said, amused, tracing the swell of Levi's lower lip with his thumb and drawing his finger back, shining wet. Levi had watched, his mouth suddenly dry, as Erwin had pressed his finger languidly into his own mouth, sucking briefly at the flesh. "I discovered it several years ago, a plain along the ocean floor, sand packed hard like clay, hollow reeds swaying along its surface and making music in the current. The stalks carry up fresh water from below, clean, crisp, cold, the second most delicious thing I have ever tasted." _

_ "And the first?" Levi had asked, breathless.  _

_ Erwin had smiled, eyes gleaming cyan in the low light, as he traced his tongue, sandpaper smooth, over the seashell curve of Levi's ear. "I believe you already know." The points of his teeth had skimmed over Levi's skin.  _

Erwin's frame was solid beneath his palms, and Levi had become a devoted worshiper at the altar of his body, praying for a benediction, praying to a deity, because he believed, he believed, he believed. 

* * *

The day that Levi asks to go with Erwin, his decision is drawn by an intense craving that starts at the root of his soul, a desperate desire to go out and see the world that Erwin inhabits for himself. The descriptions have become so vivid in Levi's mind that he wishes to supplement them with images of his own, he wants to touch and be touched, fingers nipped by curious fish, silvery mirrors of movement; he wants to feel the sea grass wrap smooth and soft around his legs; he wants to explore the coral reefs that Erwin has spent countless nights waxing lyrical about. His decision is also driven by a sort of aching loneliness when Erwin is away, the shore calling out for the tide to return, to return, all the while knowing that after its bittersweet reunion the waves will recede again from the sand. And then, of course, there is the boredom; the hours in his days have been spent alternately wishing for Erwin to return and standing up and roaming about the small space he has been allotted; he has counted each and every individual pod of lichen growing on the cave walls three times over and he is growing restless for the universe that Erwin assures him is awaiting just a few meters away. 

Erwin smiles, not unkindly, when Levi informs him of his wish to go and see the world outside. The smile vanishes, almost immediately, lingering around the corners of his lips, when Levi clarifies that he has no desire to be changed yet. 

There is still a nagging hesitancy in the back of his mind, whispering that what Erwin has suggested, is suggesting, will suggest is irreversible, that Levi will be flung headlong into the unknown without a way back to the familiar. The same voice whispers to him, in the middle of his presumed afternoons, when he is lying cold and huddled on the sea moss, trying to warm himself by a slowly guttering fire, that he should be frightened. That he should be scared. He has lost his memories, he has lost his way, the path beneath his feet is slick and slippery in the darkness. He closes his eyes, tries to think, tries to remember. Seaweed gloss becomes the corners of a photograph, yes, he was a photographer, he remembers, triumphantly, but when he holds up the photograph to his mind's eye, he finds that he can no longer discern the contents, washed away as they are in a slurry of greys and blacks and whites. 

It seems unimportant, illogical, and even if he had a camera with him, Levi feels that Erwin in still motion, Erwin captured in 1/1000th of a second shutter setting would not be enough to explain his grace. He tosses the idea aside, because Erwin is far too lovely to capture in the solid boundaries of four corners.

"Is it still...possible?" Levi asks, tentative, worried that he's upset Erwin somehow with his incapability to commit, and he hates how unsure he sounds, hates the way the voice in the back of his mind is shining through. "Could you still show me?" He looks up at Erwin, the bioluminescent corals overhead spilling pink and orange highlights onto the parts of his face that Levi can see. 

"I suppose," Erwin muses, his voice rumbling through Levi's chest, cool and crisp and comforting. "We will have to practice, though, in here. It will benefit you to increase your lung capacity for more than the span of a few moments. Do you think you can do that for me, my sweet, beautiful boy?" 

Levi nods fervently. He wants to be good for him, he wants to be sweet, wants to be beautiful. He believes. 

* * *

 

Levi wakes up this particular morning to find himself warm, still cradled in the coil of Erwin's tail. Erwin hums, a soft vibrato through Levi's rib cage, as Levi swims out of the depths of sleep into alertness. 

"You're still here," he breathes as Erwin's tail flicks lightly, lazily, against his belly. "You're usually gone by now." 

"I thought perhaps I should help you practice," Erwin says, amused. "It would not have you do to accidentally drown yourself before I am ready for that tragedy. You seem to be quite prone at wounding yourself, or perhaps you are just particularly fragile." 

Levi stands up, hesitant, shivering at the damp chill that assaults his skin as he steps out from the coil of Erwin's tail. Erwin watches, gaze languid and lazy, as Levi goes through his morning routine, dipping the conch shell into the bag of sea grass and drawing up a drink of water, going to relieve himself in a smooth, white, hollow bowl of coral, a branch from the bottom extending out past the cave, going down, down, down into the depths, as Erwin has explained to him, providing nutrients for bottom feeders and other such organisms that Levi cannot even begin to imagine. When he turns back around, finished cleaning himself with water that he also drains down the bowl, he finds that Erwin is already inside the sea, hair slicked back, molten gold across his forehead, waiting expectantly. 

He takes a deep breath, steps forward towards the edge of the rocks. Levi shudders the instant he dips his toe into the water, the chill running up his leg and sending goosebumps racing down his arms. Erwin smiles patiently, holding his arms up to Levi, ready to catch him, and Levi is vaguely reminded of being a small child learning how to float in the cyan depths of the community pool. Who was it? His father, dark hair, dark eyes, holding out long arms to him and encouraging him to jump. His father, his father...Levi's head is dizzy with the sudden memory, the nagging voice in his conscience screaming at him that he does have a history, that he does have a past, that he cannot possibly afford to lose it - 

"You can do it, my sweet," Erwin says gently, cutting through his thoughts, and he shakes away the unwanted memories. Bracing himself. This is vastly different; Erwin is not teaching him how to swim, he is teaching him how to drown and how to outwit the watery grasp of the waves that batter at the battlements of his own mortality. "You should just jump in," Erwin adds, with a smile dancing around his face. "That way you get the shock over all at once."

Levi hesitates for a few moments, but he trusts, he accepts, he believes, he is half in love with Erwin already if not more, and he shouts in surprise, his voice echoing off the dripping stone walls as the water wraps itself around him in his plunge, shocking him with the cold. Erwin is soothing, hands quick to stroke up and down Levi's arms, tail gently wrapping around, between, over and under Levi's thighs and calves, and he finds himself warmed in instances. 

"Come," Erwin says gently, taking him by the hand, and Levi will never be able to get over the feeling of web and fin laced between his fingers, enveloping his digits, and yet, it has already become expected, a constant, something Levi has come to want and crave. "Let us practice."

Levi takes a deep breath, and allows Erwin to tug him under. He opens his eyes wide, the salt stinging, as he searches through the dark water for Erwin's form. He is vaguely aware of it, dark and shadowed beside him, barely aware of the way the seaweed soft strands of Erwin's hair gleam molten in the weak light. Lone shapes flicker at the edges of his vision, fish that have lost their way, he thinks, and he panics when he finds that he cannot differentiate the surface from the sea. 

His lungs are screaming, burning for air, and as though he senses this, Erwin's form grows larger as he swims towards Levi, soft vibrations melting through the water. He cradles Levi's face in his hands, thumbs smoothing across the planes of Levi's cheekbones, before pressing lips that taste like salt and brine and sweetness against Levi's own. Levi opens his mouth, accepts, trusts, believes, and Erwin breathes in streams of soft, pure air into his lungs, delicious and intoxicating and uncontaminated. It is the first time Erwin kisses him, and Levi is exhilarated, stirred, aroused, high off the purest oxygen and the feel of Erwin's lips plush against his own, head whirling as Erwin nibbles at his lower lip with teeth that could pierce the flesh with just the slightest application of pressure. He forgets that he is supposed to be practicing, forgets that he is supposed to be holding his breath, he forgets he forgets he forgets, and his hands come up to tangle in the seaweed softness of Erwin's hair to pull himself closer. 

He can no longer tell the sea from the sky, somewhere far far above, can no longer focus on the chill of the water. Erwin has become his universe, has become his savior and his damnation, and he opens his mouth further, begging, desperate for whatever Erwin is willing to give up. 

Long after they have surfaced - Erwin deems the day's practice a massive failure - Levi cannot stop reaching for the sweet taste of Erwin's lips. He begs, with his body and his half-gasped words, as the coil of Erwin's tail snakes around his legs, parting them sweet and easy in his surrender, sobs with a voice that surely cannot be his own as Erwin wraps a hand slick and tender around his aching cock. He strokes, light and rough, responding to every twitch of Levi's body beneath him, watching intently as Levi flushes rosy in the dim light and starts to arch, frantic, frenzied, into his touch. Levi reaches up, drags Erwin down for another kiss, sobbing curses as he spills himself across his abdomen, sticky pearls across the cream of his skin. 

Erwin watches Levi's surrender with cyan eyes, watches him drift into lazy afternoon dreams. Levi's lips are swollen, kiss-bitten, and Erwin traces them with his thumb, memorizing their outline. 

"Sweet, beautiful Levi," he murmurs softly, stroking away strands of Levi's hair, damp at the temples from the sea and his exertions. "This is foolish of us. You must know that." 

Levi doesn't reply, already swaddled in the comfort of sleep, and Erwin sighs, a small smile flirting around his mouth, before he carefully pulls away, pillows Levi's head against a soft parcel of sea moss, and drags himself back to the sea. 


	6. Azure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sea nettles are jellyfish that have long, clear tentacles that can go up to ~2m in length. Stings from sea nettles are not generally dangerous and almost always do not require medical assistance, but they are very painful and usually leave a rash around the affected area.

They continue practicing; it becomes customary for Levi to wake up now spooned in the cradle of Erwin's arms, but Erwin has made it firmly, abundantly, crystal clear that Levi cannot simply go around indulging himself whenever he pleases. He reins in control, keeping Levi on a tight leash, the proverbial chain gleaming as it wraps around Levi's neck like the prettiest of necklaces. He bares his pulse willingly, desperately, beseechingly, tries to get Erwin to drag the chain tight, tight, tighter. He wants Erwin to take his breath away, in the most figurative and literal ways he knows how. 

"You are absolutely dying for me to keep you, aren't you?" Erwin asks him, an amused look around the corners of his eyes when Levi mentions the idea. "Some physical proof of belonging, of ownership. Is that what you want?" 

Levi nods fervently, nibbling at the pad of Erwin's thumb from where Erwin has it pressed against the pale pink swell of his lower lip. He craves it, wants to be kept, damn the stigma that the unnecessarily human part of his mind keeps pushing to the forefront of his thoughts. He cannot feel ashamed about it, not when Erwin looks at him like that and washes away his doubt with the swell of the tides. He cannot, and he will not, allow himself to believe that he has at any moment in his life not been rushing towards Erwin, a current of destiny tugging him helplessly along in its slipstream, omnipotent and omniscient, knowing Levi's wishes before they had even sparked conceptual in his mind. 

It is hard for Levi to believe that he ever lived a life without Erwin in it. It is hard to believe that there was a Levi Ackerman in the past, one that lived on the surface, one who bought flowers that smelled sickening sweet when he swept them into his trash can - and why had he done that? he wonders to himself now. He forgets in fractions, and he encourages the ivory blankness that envelops his mind, washing it anew, smoothing out the wrinkles. He has a lifetime, the rest of eternity, it feels like sometimes, to spend with Erwin, to remember and to recall and to cherish every moment. 

"Yes, keep me," he whispers, he all but begs. He feels as though he cannot express it any other way. Erwin has unmade him, unmolded him, before raising him up, a pinnacle, a pedestal, of clay, fragile and shaped by Erwin's hands. "Prove that I am yours."

Even to his own ears, it sounds absurd. Levi has never existed a day without being Erwin's. The proof is written in the way Erwin handles his limbs, delicate and pristine and china, arranging them; it is spelt in the way he drags Levi underwater, unnatural, extraordinary, defying every law that Levi has been brought up to believe as he allows himself to sink farther into obsession. Certainly he does not need something tangible, he does not need a collar or a leash or anything of the sort, but he wants one. 

"Lovely, greedy boy," Erwin muses as Levi nips at the pad of his thumb. "I will consider your request, but you must show me you are deserving of such. You must practice, my sweet, vicious Levi," he whispers, "I cannot just go around indulging your every whim with kisses and strokes and caresses. What sort of master would that make me?" 

Levi shivers, long, languid, sensuous at the way the word rolls so easily off Erwin's tongue, at the way he accepts this new normal so easily, accepts submission. He has been born for this, it fits him perfectly, and he wants to cry with the beauty of his surrender. He has never felt so loved before. It is almost scary, the intensity of his feeling, and he wants it to go forever, an endless aching swell of desire. 

The day comes when Levi can finally hold his breath for three minutes, when he can finally swim down to the bottom of the chasm, until he can finally peek to the entrance of the grotto and see the clear never-ending navy of the sea beyond. His fingers scrabble against the lichen slick coating at the bottom, and he looks up to find Erwin's frame looming over him, dark, deep, monstrous though his mind would never allow him to think that blasphemy about the only god he knows, and he opens his mouth, tang and rush of seawater melted away in the soft tenderness of Erwin's kiss.

"Good boy," Erwin tells him when they surface, Levi tossing his head back and reveling in the sweetness of the surface, of Erwin's words sharp and crystal clear, unmuted and unparalleled in their meaning in the air. The words seem to crystallize, and he wants to reach out, wants to capture them in his hands, wants to stamp them all over his collarbones because he does not know if he will ever accomplish a higher form of praise. 

"Good boy," Erwin repeats, soft, deep, gentle, and Levi's eyes fill, glassy with tears, as he stares into the flickering, guttering flames a few feet away, Erwin's mouth wrapped around hard, aching flesh, his own hands tangled in the spongy moss beneath him as he tries not to arch, tries not to writhe beneath Erwin's ministrations. Sharp grazes against his skin, and he jumps, gasping, Erwin's hands curling around the width of his thighs and pressing him down, azure eyes a slick warning up to Levi's shivery gaze. 

He remains perfectly still, his fingers clenching white in the moss, sobbing, eyes wide open, as he accepts his destiny with arms wide open. 

* * *

 

"You have been so good for me, lovely Levi," Erwin tells him one evening as he hoists himself neatly out of the water, a dripping seaweed bag slung over his shoulder. He upends the contents on the slick dark rock, large clumps of sea moss to replace the clumps Levi had torn out in his desperation. Fish, slick and gleaming silver still, eyes wide and gimlet, dead, staring up at Levi, who begins to make quick work of skinning them with a sharp rock he'd dislodged from the cave walls. Erwin watches him as he strips the fish of their silvery scales, deftly cuts it open to remove the bones and organs, cutting the white fillets into strips. 

Levi catches his gaze, holds out a slab of bleeding white flesh, holds his breath as Erwin lowers his head, jaws wide, razor sharp teeth just barely skimming the skin of Levi's palm as he takes it. Levi watches, hopelessly entranced, as Erwin chews, traces the motion of his Adam's apple as it bobs up and down in his swallows. He wants to be devoured, wants to offer himself a feast, a dinner, a banquet to Erwin's kisses. 

"I have something special for you, darling boy," Erwin says after he is finished swallowing. He picks apart a smaller pouch that had escaped Levi's notice, undoes the kelp drawstring that cinches it closed, and Levi gasps in awe and wonder as gleaming spheres trickle out into the bowl of Erwin's hand. Pink, pale rose, ivory and cream, perfect orbs, joined together with a length of near invisible gossamer that Levi can just barely make out, silk, in the flickering light of the fire between them. "Come here, and let me put it on for you." 

The pearls sit cold and smooth against his throat as Erwin tenderly, lovingly, reaches around and drapes the necklace around the column of Levi's neck. It is loose, at first, and Levi reaches up to finger one of the beads, admiring its creamy sheen against his fingertips, wishing Erwin would tug it tighter. As if reading his thoughts, Erwin adjusts it, pulls it gently back, so the pearl Levi had been holding is jolted into the hollow of his throat, tight and demanding, and Levi gasps, shivering, breathless. He winces as Erwin knots the necklace behind him, secure at the nape of his neck, whimpering at the sting as the gossamer settles against his skin. 

"I know, sweet, it hurts, sea nettles usually do," Erwin whispers, soothing balm. "But it seemed such a shame to mar your beauty with a seaweed twine. This is much more elegant, much more deserving of you." 

Levi nods, a rash and sting circling the column of his neck with a painful crimson fire that brings tears to his eyes. He wants to be deserving, wants to prove himself worthy of the gift Erwin has given him. 

Erwin soothes him, long, tender strokes up his chest, trailing down his inner thighs, gentle, smooth, soft. He brings hands up to Levi's face, thumbs stroking along his cheekbones, wiping away tears that threaten dangling at the tips of Levi's eyelashes. It is then that Levi sees the red lash marks that line Erwin's hands, mar his fingers, circle his wrists like the most painful of manacles, and the tears come in earnest now. Sobbing, breathless, because the debt he owes is incomprehensible, insurmountable, and Erwin loves him, he must, he loves him enough for this, he loves him without measure, without care, with an abandon that frightens him. 

He loves him. 

He sobs over Erwin's wounds, bathing them with his tears, until the palms of Erwin's hands collect salt water, damp and wet, as though he had never left the sea. 

Levi cries himself to an early fatigue, his eyes glassy and dull as he watches the guttering fire crackling beside them, cried out, worn, desperately tired as Erwin lowers himself to the sea moss nest behind him. He tugs Levi close, letting him pillow his head on his arm, hand coming up to cradle Levi's neck where the pearls rest, gleaming and warmed from Levi's skin. 

"You are mine." It is not a question. It is a statement, a fact, one that Levi cannot possibly ever hope or need or want to refute. 

He nods, barely. 

"Thank you," he breathes, and Erwin presses a kiss behind his ear, soft, soothing, and the stinging circlet around his neck fades away into the most exquisite of aches as he succumbs to sleep. 

 


	7. Cobalt

The day finally comes when Levi grows tired of peering out, eyes stinging, at the world beyond what he can see past the grotto entrance. It wavers, he can just barely make out the lawn of sea grass Erwin has talked about, long strands waving lightly in the current. Suddenly the cave feels suffocatingly small, and Levi struggles to breathe, to wonder, to think. He can barely imagine what it must feel like for Erwin, someone who's probably used to having the entire ocean at his disposal, miles and miles of never ending cobalt in which he can stretch out and relax and breathe. 

Tentative, he asks Erwin if they can go outside. The pearls bob against his Adam's apple as he talks, a choker, delightfully smooth and strangling. and yet Levi has never felt more liberated. For the first time in his twenty-seven years, he is free and reveling in his newfound independence. 

"Please, Erwin," he remembers, adding it hastily to the end of his request. Polite. Erwin presses his forefinger underneath Levi's chin, lifting his head up so their gazes meet, so the pearls wrapped around Levi's neck gleam in the guttering light of the fire, the sea nettle gossamer silk gleaming silver along the hairline vermilion that circles Levi's neck. 

"There are...others out there," Erwin says, looking thoughtful as his fingers dance along the slender column of Levi's neck, fiddling with a pale pink pearl. Levi's breath catches in his throat as Erwin presses it lightly into the hollow of his throat, not enough to gag, just enough to warn. "Others like me. I don't want you to go out like this." He gestures to Levi's body, naked flesh cream and ivory and pale pink, blood rising to the surface to meet Erwin's scrutiny. "You are too beautiful to give yourself away like this." 

Levi flushes rosy at Erwin's words. Beautiful? Him? He hasn't seen his reflection clearly in ages, but from what he struggles to remember, he had been nothing special to look at. If he shuts his eyes, tightly, tightly, if he thinks very hard, he thinks he can remember looking into a glass, pale skin, deep circles beneath his eyes from trouble sleeping, pale lips that were cracked and chapped and thin. Dark hair, parted in the middle, a bit too long, hanging in his eyes, dark and bloodshot from late nights and worry. What was there to worry about? he wonders to himself now, because Erwin says he is beautiful, and his words ring true. 

"Am I?" he asks, made breathless by Erwin's admission. Erwin smiles, razor sharp, traces a finger down the side of Levi's face. 

"But of course," he says, as if there's no question about it. "All my things are beautiful." 

He adores it. 

"When I look at you, I see you in all your humanity. In all your faults and flaws and mistakes. Perfect imperfection. Rose and cream and ivory to match your pearls." His fingertips brush across Levi's skin, hypnotic and overwhelming in their tenderness. "And I certainly would not want the others to know what a beautiful treasure I have." His hand runs between Levi's legs, and Levi watches with bated breath as Erwin's hand swallows up his flesh, soft, tender, twitching in interest already. Wanton. 

Erwin leans forward, presses a kiss to the tip before pulling away, leaving him wanting. "I suppose I will have to think of something. Of course, the obvious solution here is just for you to let me change you."

Startled, Levi shakes his head before he can even comprehend the implications of his unconscious decision, his mind and body uniting in a frantic effort to retain himself, to remain himself. He is almost ashamed, but Erwin just smiles gently and strokes his side, soothing. Understanding. He does not deserve this, he thinks to himself, does not deserve even this small bit of kindness. 

"Of course, the choice is yours, my dear," Erwin reminds him. Levi's head reels with the power. "I will not force you into anything. That would be far too cruel and irresponsible."

That night, Levi spends the night curled inside the sleek coil of Erwin's tail, his hands running along its gleaming length, cobalt and crimson by turns as the firelight flickers across its surface. Erwin hums, a deep resonating sound that Levi can feel vibrating through his bones, as Levi strokes it. The scales are smooth beneath his hands, and Erwin feeds him from the palm of his hand, fish that is not quite cooked all the way through, but he hardly notices the metallic tang in his mouth as he touches and strokes and caresses, noting the different textures as the tail narrows, cobalt and sapphire and every shade of blue that he can possibly imagine, the sea and the sky and he finds himself soaring and drowning by turns. 

"I suppose I came to drown as well. Much like you." 

The words ring crystal in Levi's ears. His brain struggles to fathom Erwin, small, helplessly human, two-legged and captive of his own mortality. It is hard to picture. Levi struggles through the image, his mind settling and focusing on The Others that Erwin speaks about. Made. Not born. 

His heart leaps. Maybe there is a chance for him, too, at redemption and salvation and damnation eternal. 

"A tail," Levi murmurs, reverently, in awe. Erwin's flicks absentmindedly, casting shade and blue glare across the rocks, spilling shadow across Levi's thighs. "But...maybe I could wear it, without changing?" He wants to pinch himself at the last two words that he adds on. How can he still be reluctant, how can he still find hesitation? Erwin is all he has needed, all he will ever need, and yet he stumbles.

Erwin hums in consideration. "I will think about it, darling boy," he says gently, hand tugging through Levi's hair. Levi hides his disappointment in the flickering shadow of the firelight, hates himself for being so wanton and so desperate. Erwin has already given him so much, and he truly is greedy, a glutton. He doesn't deserve this. 

* * *

 

When Levi wakes up the next morning, Erwin is already gone, and his heart stutters for half a beat, because his worst nightmares have come true: Erwin has disappeared, Erwin has left, because Levi asks too much, wants too much, demands too much. He stands up slowly, feeling sick, his eyes casting about the cave for any sign of Erwin. 

He raises a trembling hand to his neck, fingers feeling smooth, round pearl, and he sighs in audible relief, because this is tangible, lovely proof that it is real. The corals studded in the rock glow a slight, soft gold, and Levi peers into the dark water, wondering. His reflection gleams back at him, wavering and vague as the water laps against the rocks, and he squints to examine it further. 

From what he can see, his hair is longer, framing his face, wild strands escaping over his forehead. His lips, pinched tight together, draw a severe slash across his face, and his cheeks are hollowed, cheekbones sculpted across plains of hunger that he does not feel. He looks like a ghost, he is definitely not beautiful, he is nothing like what Erwin presumes. 

He loses hours in his reflection, studying the stranger he has become, fingering the pearls at his throat absentmindedly to remind himself of his reality. His stomach groans, growls in anguish, empty and starving, but Levi pushes away the pain to the back of his mind, Narcissus incarnate and hating every moment he loses in his own image. As he studies himself further, he is surprised to find the features changing. His face fills out before his very eyes, mouth becomes soft and swollen with desire, hair seaweed soft and shiny and gleaming. He rubs his eyes, hard, before gaping back down at his reflection. He is beautiful. 

Erwin surfaces a moment later, splashing the planes of Levi's cheeks with water, and Levi gasps as he jerks himself back from the ledge. Erwin hoists himself out of the water, dampening Levi's palms and knees with the sea; once he has firm purchase on the slippery rocks, he reaches back down into the water and pulls up something green, something slick. Levi hesitates before coming over to investigate, feet slapping wetly against the water that Erwin has dredged up with him. 

"Try it on," Erwin says, holding it out to him. Upon closer inspection, Levi finds that it is the hollow shell of a tail, something much like Erwin's, elegant and powerful, but much smaller. It is a lovely color, the deep green of emeralds, scales shimmering wetly, and when he reaches out to run a finger tentatively down the side, it feels warm and smooth beneath his skin. He wonders for half a second if this belongs to one of The Others, if Erwin has killed. His heart leaps into his throat at the thought. 

"It is mine," Erwin assures him. "From many, many, many years ago, when I was still growing."

Levi steps obligingly in, flattered. It is, was, will always be a small part of Erwin, and Levi revels in the thought that he has maneuvered his way under Erwin's skin in the smallest way he can. The insides are smooth and slick and warm against his legs, wrapping securely around his limbs, and he allows Erwin to cinch the waist in with a length of seaweed. He wriggles his legs experimentally, grins in delight when he manages to flick the tail upwards by kicking his feet in synchrony. Erwin watches him, a slight smile on his face,

"What a good boy you are," he says, reaching out to stroke a hand through Levi's hair. 

Levi presses up into the hand, encouraging, nuzzling, delighted by how the reflection from the stilling water shows him, emerald and cream and tiny, painting him in stark contrast to Erwin, sapphire and gold and dominating, a finger hooked into the gossamer strands of sea nettle as he tugs Levi close for a kiss. 

"My beautiful boy," Erwin murmurs against his mouth, and Levi forgets his hunger, forgets the sting of the nettles around his neck, forgets himself in the rush of euphoria that comes with Erwin's kiss. Yes, he is beautiful, he thinks to himself, and he allows Erwin to drag him down into the water to test the fit, their reflections rippling and dissipating around them in shimmers of jeweled colour. 


	8. Glaucous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the plot thickens

Levi skims his hand against the mossy slick of the grotto floor, wriggling his new tail to test the feel. He has been practicing with it so much lately, both with and without Erwin, that it has begun to feel like an extension of himself, slick and warm and lovely against his limbs. He is surrounded with Erwin, scales and skin and pearls, and he particularly enjoys smoothing his hands over the shimmering emerald of Erwin's cast-off tail. It moves with his command, it breathes, it seems to pulse almost, tender and trusting against his trusting and tender palms. It gives, freely, and Levi is an empty pitcher, aching with the urgency to be full and brimming. Not full, not brimming.

Levi wants to overflow. 

He traces the bubbles of air that he lets leak out of his mouth and nose, eyes following their upward journey as they flicker and waver in their quest for the surface. Like joins with like, but Levi finds no particular desire to return to the air, not until his lungs are aching and burning and screaming for him to push up, _now_. He enjoys the way the water runs soft caresses through his hair, which has grown longer, spilling like the darkest ink across his vision, gleaming and seaweed soft; he likes the way the lost fish approach, cautious and then braver as they recognize him, scales shimmering like the brightest and most incandescent of mirrors as they nestle snug against his skin. 

_And how do they do that?_ he wonders to himself one evening, staring up at the surface and finding the firelight flickering orange and crimson across the surface. Erwin waits up there for him, lazily flicking his tail; Levi can barely make out the moving shadows dancing across the rocky, stalactite-studded ceiling of the grotto. _How do these lost fish so easily and readily accept him as one of their own?_

He asks Erwin when he surfaces, the pearls bobbing against his Adam's apple as he gasps, his lungs sighing with the influx of oxygen, the sweetest drug. He hoists himself up a bit, so his forearms are resting on the slippery rock ledge, and Erwin looks at him, amused at the reversed juxtaposition. 

"Not coming out of the water, pet?" he asks, the firelight flickering across his features, so deific and gorgeous that it takes Levi's breath away. "Perhaps it's because you've taken quite a shine to the sea, and She has noticed." 

"It's comfortable," Levi says, and erwin laughs, a rich, deep sound that has Levi suddenly hungry, suddenly aching for the touch of Erwin's hand. He drags himself out of the water with splashing, sucking noises, unravels the kelp belt that cinches his tail closed, and steps out of it neatly to let it coil around him like hoops of emerald. He all but runs toward Erwin, a plant turning its petals to the eternal sunlight, because surely he will die without his attention. He snugs himself into the open circlet of Erwin's arms, barely even noticing the sting anymore as the nettle and pearl choker finds a fresh ring of skin around his neck to irritate. He has come to welcome the pain, come to love and crave the burn and the accompanying itch that follows. 

"So interesting," Erwin muses, as he wriggles a long finger between Levi's pulse and the necklace. Levi stutters a gasp as the nettle knots that hold the necklace together press rough against the tip of his spine, shuddering at the twinge of pain that runs through him. "All other creatures want to survive; it's basic instinct, basic survival skills. If not them, then their children, their children's children, something, anything to keep the line alive. Humans..." He trails off, tugging Levi closer so Levi can feel the air of Erwin's words against his lips. He inhales, hungry, greedy, desperate for the holy scripture that falls so easily from Erwin's lips, colored coral and crimson and delightful. 

"Humans," he muses, now releasing Levi, rolling over on top of him, pinning him in between his arms. His hair, golden, molten, lovely, spills over his forehead, and Levi looks up, staring unabashed, drowning in Erwin's eyes, glaucous and entrancing. "You actively try to die, for reasons I cannot seem to fathom. Sweet, precious Levi," he whispers, lowering himself so their foreheads touch, so Levi can all but feel Erwin's eyelashes tickling his own, "remind me again, why did you try to do that?" 

Levi swallows; Erwin's mouth is so close, so far. He dares not reach up and demand for it, dares not to tangle hands in topaz hair that is surely tangling strands with his own dark ones even now. He dares not ask, because it is not his place to. 

"I was...trying to reach you," he murmurs, because it is the only truth he knows. "All my life I've been trying to get closer to you." His words ring honest, and he can see Erwin's eyes crinkle into crescents, feels more than sees the smile that darts across Erwin's mouth as he lowers it - finally, finally, finally! - onto Levi's. 

"Very good, my darling," Erwin whispers, Levi's mouth kiss swollen and tiny against his own. "You're ready to come outside. Sleep now, tomorrow will be an exciting day." He rolls off Levi, his tail snaking its sinuous way beneath Levi's limbs, coiling over him, warm, animate, breathing blanket; his arms, gentle now, wrap around Levi and tug him close, so Levi's back is pressed against his chest. One hand comes up to cup Levi's neck, palm pulse pearls. Possessive. Levi has abandoned afternoon naps, because he finds he can no longer fall asleep without the comforting, secure pressure Erwin places on his neck, because he can no longer find his way into dreams without his pulse warm against Erwin's fingers. 

"Shh..." Erwin whispers into Levi's hair, and Levi finds himself sinking into slumber. "Shh, my good boy, my good boy...." 

A woman makes an appearance in his dreams that night, someone with a blurred out face, a shock of honey hair, and she is saying something, shouting, but Levi cannot hear, does not want to hear. Her screams are muffled, as if from a great distance, sound wavering, and a hand grasps his shoulder, drowns his skin, drags him back. He continues staring at the woman's receding form for a moment, before Erwin's voice wends its way into his dreams and guides him home. 

* * *

 Erwin  takes him by the hand the next morning after he has finished his morning routine, slips with him neatly into the water. The cold no longer shocks Levi, and he slides into it, nearly as graceful as Erwin does, glides into the ocean's welcoming arms and drapes the water around him, cool, weightless comfort. He takes a deep breath before ducking his head under water and pulling himself down, down through the water, following Erwin towards the grotto entrance. 

Erwin kisses him once, there, filling his lungs with pure, sweet oxygen, pulls back before Levi can even be tempted to ask for more. He takes Levi's hand in his, pulls him out into the universe. Reborn, and, like a newborn, Levi splutters out his air almost instantly, shocked at the sheer beauty of the world he has come into. Erwin kisses him again, but his look is only a gentle reprimand, tempered by a smile that Levi finds positively angelic. But he believes in no angels, no demons, no Gods and no Devils. There is only, and there has only ever been, Erwin. 

It is, if possible, even more beautiful than Erwin had described. The sea grass dances gently in the current, long and lovely and every color of green. Tiny fish, in all shapes and colors, dart in and out of the patches, playful and curious as Levi approaches. He reaches out, the grass tickling against his fingers, and startles when he upsets a swarm of tiny, electric yellow and purple fish that dart up around his outstretched hand, nipping curious at the thin flesh that separates one finger from the next. 

_Not yet,_ he wants to tell them as they examine the separation of his fingers. _But maybe soon, if Erwin will allow me._

The fish seem to understand, and swim up his wrist, his arm, darting through his hair so he laughs at the ticklish feeling, large bubbles flickering up, up, up. Erwin brings him in for another kiss, and Levi giggles, helpless, childlike, at the picture they must make. He opens his eyes in wonder, the purple fish darting from his hair to Erwin's, threading through the blonde strands and peeking back out at him. He reaches out, strokes Erwin's hair absentmindedly, laughing at the way the fish dart out of the way of his fingers, before remembering his place; his hand drops back to his side, and he looks at Erwin from under lowered lashes, apologetic. Erwin's smile is kind, gentle, benevolent, and he reaches out to take Levi's hand and press a kiss to his palm. 

"Go explore," Erwin says, his mouth moving, but no bubbles spilling out. His voice is soft, clear, melodic, the water giving it a different quality than when he speaks in the cave, a baritone that Levi can feel vibrating through every bone of his body. "Go on, darling. You have earned this." 

Levi revels in Erwin's permission, and he spends the rest of the afternoon combing through the sea grass with his fingers, watching the antics of all sorts of fish that he cannot even begin to name as they play and frolic in swarms around him. 

Seahorses, tiny and delicate, heads held regal as they wrap their curled tails around long strands of sea grass, swaying in the current. The smaller ones cling tight to the roots, careful not to be swept away in the tide. Basic survival, tiny trumpet beaks upturned into the ebb and flow of the tides to snatch tiny minuscule shrimp that pass by in the waves, mere specks in Levi's vision. 

A sea dragon approaches, cautiously, and Levi reaches out, fingers tracing over the leafy flesh that lingers, kelp-like, on the creature's body. It eyes him for a moment, black, beady, breathtaking, before drifting away out of Levi's sight. 

A moment of paralyzing fear sweeps through him when the grasses suddenly part in front of his hand and he comes face to face with the rounded snub nose of a nurse shark. She looks at him, curious, and Levi is frozen in time, frozen in space, wondering, waiting. 

"She will not hurt you." Erwin's voice is soothing as his hand reaches out, grasps Levi's shoulder, moves him away. "She is just trying to get home, lovely, to have her children. Look."

The shark opens its mouth wide, its eyes slitting closed, displaying a mouthful of razor sharp teeth, and then it wriggles itself forward, kicking up a milky spray of sand that clouds the water so that Levi almost misses the tiny dark shape that trails behind her. 

As the nurse shark and her first pup pass by, Levi can see the shape her distorted belly makes, rounded and bulging, disrupting the sleek lines of her graceful form. The image stays with him, strong, powerful, overwhelming, as Erwin breathes air into his lungs once more and starts to tug him towards home. 

* * *

 

"Did you enjoy yourself today, pet?" Erwin asks him after they have surfaced and Levi has eaten. He is lying, curled around Levi, his hand pressed gentle against Levi's throat, and Levi jolts out of sleep, body tired with fatigue, mind overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the world. "Was it everything like you'd hoped?" 

"It was more than that," he admits, his words slurry. "It was incredible." 

"It is," Erwin agrees, his hand pressing a bit more tightly. "But you certainly make it much prettier." He nips at the curve of Levi's ear, gentle. "You are growing," he says, his voice musing, if holding a note of surprise.

"Am I?" Levi asks, drowsy. "It must be because you take such good care of me..." 

He falls asleep, Erwin's hand tight against his throat, and does not see the fleeting look of concern that passes over his expression. 


	9. Zaffre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just reiterate that Major Character Death is not a tag here.

The days pass. Levi wakes up, eats, swims, sleeps. Rinse and repeat. The tail has grown comfortable around him, cinching him in like a second skin, and it is much to his delight that he finds that he no longer needs to wear the belt of kelp Erwin had fashioned for him, no longer needs the additional weedy support because the scales fit slick and smooth against him, wrapping around him like the most comforting of blankets. He is consumed, Erwin enveloping him in the most intimate of ways, and, sometimes, even if he has no desire to enter the water, he finds himself slipping into the emerald shell anyway, just to feel its soft slickness against his legs. 

It has become a force of nature, Erwin integrating himself flawlessly into Levi's routine even when Levi wakes up to find that Erwin has already left, the sea moss cooling rapid under his touch, the hollow left behind by his body springing back into place. Levi's lungs have expanded much more; he finds that he can now dart out into the sea grass for a minute or so before he is forced to return to the shelter of the cave, to his crippling addiction for the air. 

Simpler, truly it would be, to allow Erwin to change him, he thinks to himself, his legs, free of the tail for now, dangling into the dark water, pale matchsticks, knobby and milky and, frankly, ugly, Levi thinks with distaste as he stares at the cloudy reflection they leave in the water. Legs. What does he need them for? he wonders, kicking up a spray of water that splatters wet against a protruding stalactite. They're useless, limbs that only delineate the differences between Erwin and himself. 

He informs Erwin of his thoughts when Erwin comes back for the night, hoisting himself out of the water, dredging up brine to coat the soles of Levi's feet cold and slick. 

"You don't want your legs, pet?" Erwin asks, looking confused for the first time in Levi's fragmented memory. "Why ever not?" He coils around Levi in his customary position, scraping scales off the fish he's brought back, guppy eyes gimlet, staring at Levi, gleaming, dead. The scales flicker like coins, shimmery in the firelight, to fall around Levi's feet, perfect coins. With a few wet-sounding cracks, Erwin tears out the fish's skeleton, fine, bloody shards of china tinkling to join the scales like glass. 

"I don't need them," Levi says, watching as Erwin thrusts a sharpened stick through the length of the fish and sets it near the fire to cook. "They're a hindrance. And" - shyly, looking at Erwin from under lowered lashes - "I want to be like you." 

Erwin laughs, a low sound that sends shivers up Levi's spine. Though he's known Erwin for all his life, Levi feels like he will never fail to tire of the rich baritone of Erwin's voice, a soundtrack filling his years with life and his life with years. 

"And how do you propose we rid you of these ailments?" Erwin asks, patting one of Levi's milky thighs with a palm that leaves smears of blood and shimmers of scale against his skin. "It is not as though you can just take them on and off whenever you please." 

It is quiet, the only sounds the soft sloshing of the water against the rocks, the gentle droplets of brine falling from the stalactites to sizzle in the fire, the hisses and cracks of the flames as they bite into the fish's flesh. 

"You can eat them off, can't you?" Levi asks, musing, thinking out loud, streams of consciousness. He turns at the way Erwin stiffens behind him, tail going rigid in its position wrapped around Levi's waist. He is surprised to find that Erwin's eyes are dark, zaffre eyes swallowed obsidian. It is a facet of Erwin that Levi has never seen before, and he finds himself wanting to take back his words. He has crossed some line, of that he's well aware, some invisible boundary that he hadn't even known existed, shoving, asking, demanding too much, too quickly. 

"Darling, you'll die," Erwin says, finally, flatly, blinking and shaking his head roughly, his pupils slowly contracting back to normal; Levi lets out a silent breath of relief. "And I am in no way close to being finished with you." 

Levi shivers at the promise in those words. 

* * *

 

Levi finishes eating, the fish hot and flaky and particularly delicious in his mouth. Erwin smiles, cards hands through Levi's hair, which has grown long enough for Erwin to bundle back, neatly, tying the inky strands together with a small length of seaweed. 

"Do you want me to cut your hair, precious?" Erwin asks as Levi stands up to dispose of the fish's scales and skeleton, silver and bone fitting neatly into the bowl of his cupped hands, shadow horrendously two-legged, ugly, despicable. "It's getting to be a bit long." Levi tosses the skeleton and bones down the bleached white coral disposal, watches as they make their skittering way to the bottom, to a depth that he has never been. Curiosity leaps, unsated, wanting, wanton. The sea grass lawn outside, beautiful and splendid as it is, is no longer enough; he is empty, hungry, desperate for more. 

He returns to Erwin's side, relaxes into the touch of Erwin's fingers massaging against his scalp, tugging through the strands. The pearls shift with every tug, every pull as Erwin untangles knots, combing it to silky smoothness, but Levi barely feels the nettle stings anymore. It has become routine, a part of life, the price he pays to stay with Erwin, a fine that he will pay over and over and over again with every aching breath he can draw through his lungs, for as long as Erwin will have him. 

"Yes, cut it," Levi murmurs, softly, voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. "Please," he adds, almost an afterthought. "It's too much." 

Erwin slips into the sea, returning moments later with a razor sharp clam shell held in hand. Even as Levi watches, fascinated, Erwin pries it open, presses the navy porcelain to his lips to suck out the contents. Levi follows the curve of Erwin's throat as he swallows, traces the line of his jugular, his pulse, the way his Adam's apple bobs with every gulp. Erwin mutters something under his breath as he pulls the shell away, and, much to Levi's surprise, he finds a trail of ruby trickling down Erwin's chin. 

Erwin reaches up with a grimace, presses a thumb against the swell of his lower lip, crimson, scarlet, vermilion, to staunch the wound. "I was careless," he says, with an apologetic smile for Levi's concern. He pulls his thumb away, the pad of his finger stained coral. "Come here, darling, and let me cut your hair for you." 

Levi acquiesces, staying still, moving his head at Erwin's requests, inky locks floating down around his face, tickling his nose and making him sneeze. Strands of darkness coat the floor around him, and when Erwin reaches around to clip the curls of hair that fall over Levi's forehead, Levi cannot resist taking a lick at Erwin's thumb, painting his lips with carmine. Erwin pauses, and Levi freezes, lowering his head, apologetic for his actions, taken without permission. 

"What's gotten into you, today, hmm?" Erwin asks, his voice cooing into the shell of Levi's ear. "Perhaps you are restless? Lonely? Or maybe you are just feeling particularly naughty today. Which one is it, or is it all of the above?" 

Levi frowns, thinking. Certainly he has no want for anything; Erwin is all he needs, all he has ever needed, and he has him now, so why is there such a frightening ache in the pit of his soul? A desire for something more, a nagging thought in the back of his mind that perhaps this isn't quite right. He shakes away that thought as quickly as it comes, scolding himself for blasphemy. 

"What happened to my good boy? Have I been neglecting you?" Erwin asks, his voice gentler than Levi deserves, and Levi swallows, rough, pearls bobbing against his throat. 

"I'm sorry," he whispers, feeling wretched, ungrateful. He is naughty, he does not deserve someone as kind and lovely as Erwin, tainting his beauty like droplets of ink into water. "I didn't mean to be demanding." 

Erwin's tail sweeps the lockets of Levi's hair into a neat little pile that he leans down and scoops up, tying it together with a length of seaweed. "Look at me," he says, gently, and Levi, ashamed of his own damning human desires, can barely hold his gaze, until Erwin's hand makes its way under his chin and tips it up so that Levi has no choice. Erwin's mouth has stopped bleeding, but the swell of his lower lip is still tinted a pale crimson, and Levi finds his eyes drawn to the smear of red, his mouth filling with saliva, because he wants, he wants, he wants it. 

Erwin's eyes narrow for the briefest of seconds, so quickly that Levi is sure he must be seeing things in the flickering shadows the firelight casts. "I'll take you out a bit farther tomorrow," Erwin promises. "There's a ship wreck not too far from here. Perhaps a change of scenery will be good for you, but you must be good for me, you understand?" He cradles Levi's face in his hands, fingers pressing, gentle, gentle, rough, and Levi gasps at the exquisite pain. "Answer me." 

He nods, his eyes fluttering closed, as he presses his head, fragile, into Erwin's hands, entrusting. 

The clam shell clicks to the rocks with a few sharp taps as Erwin drops it in favor of running his hands through Levi's newly shorn hair, fingers cradling scaly against the back of Levi's neck, pulling him up up up for a kiss. Erwin tastes like the sweetness of the sea and the tang of metal, and Levi licks once, twice, at the drying blood on Erwin's lip. He doesn't dare do too much, Erwin's hands warning in their firm grasp, and because he has already been so naughty, so undeserving. 

He falls asleep that night, Erwin's palm pressed firm against his throat, tighter than usual, but his asphyxiated, addled mind whispers to him that this is as it should be. He is Erwin's, Erwin holds the leash to his life, his dreams, the very air he breathes, and Levi cannot think of a better situation to be entangled in. It feels right, a warmth soothing him up from the soles of his feet, curled around the end of Erwin's tail. Yes, yes, yes, his brain murmurs to him as he eases into his dreams to the pulsing rhythm of Erwin's heartbeat. This is where you belong. The tiny nagging voice that had plagued Levi, that had made him naughty, was suffocated, drowned out in the steady susurrus of Erwin's breathing. 

* * *

Levi wakes up the next morning early, unnaturally so. Erwin is still asleep behind him when Levi rolls over to look, eyes closed, blonde locks falling across his forehead, breathing deep and steady like ocean waves. Levi holds his breath, careful, careful, a hand reaching up to trace Erwin's features lightly, feather brushes, surprised to find that he isn't smote down instantly for daring to touch a god like this. 

Eyelashes, gossamer fine, tickle Levi's fingertips as his hand sweeps down, light, barely there, against golden skin, the pad of his thumb tracing the swell of Erwin's lower lip. The wound is all but healed over, but Erwin's eyebrows twitch in irritation at the touch, and Levi pulls his hand back, letting it drop back to his side, quickly closing his eyes as he feels Erwin start to stir. 

He feels Erwin's electric blue gaze, piercing, as he shifts beside Levi, stirring into wakefulness. He can feel Erwin's eyes tracing over his face, curious, penetrating, and it is all Levi can do to keep his eyes closed, his expression peaceful. 

Erwin leans forward, shifting coils of muscle that Levi can feel against his skin, presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Erwin stays there, breaths warm puffs of air against Levi's cheeks, and Levi is sure that he can hear his heartbeat racing furious and frantic. 

"I know you're awake." 

Levi opens his eyes, reluctantly, finds himself drowning in the oceans of Erwin's eyes so he can barely breathe, mesmerized and terrified and needing more, more, more. "It's alright." Erwin's voice is gentle, soothing, rubbing away the terror. "You must be excited." 

Levi nods, unable to find his words. Erwin smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and Levi sighs in a relief that he isn't sure he can begin to vocalize. "Get ready," Erwin says, sitting up, slithering off the sea moss bedding so that it springs up elastic beneath Levi. "I will get you food. You have no more in stock." This, with a look at the bleached coral bowls lining the walls of the cave where Levi stores driftwood (full to overflowing), fresh water (half full) and dried fish (glaringly empty, even though he could have sworn the last time he looked it had held a decent amount). 

"Thank you," he murmurs, sitting up, but Erwin has already slid into the water, swimming away with the tiniest trail of bubbles to signal his departure. 

Levi stands up, grounded for half a second before he shouts in pain and crumples, his knees slamming rough into the rock, but the bruises that he is sure that are already forming beneath the surface are nothing in comparison to the fiery agony racing up his thighs. Sobbing, gritting his teeth tight together, Levi manages to squeeze an eye, thick with tears, open to look. 

From what he can see of them, the outsides of his thighs bear four parallel crimson lines, gashes that have opened up the instant he placed pressure on them, bleeding fresh cerise all over the rocks. It burns, an inferno, and Levi curls up into himself, a fetus, tender and aching and wounded, sobbing through clenched teeth as he tries to rock away the pain, praying for mercy, praying for help, praying for Erwin. 

Levi doesn't realize how close he is to the end of the rock ledge until he suddenly finds himself in free fall, a gasp of weightlessness, gravity dragging him down, until he lands with an ungainly splash in the water below. The salt stings his wounds, and he shouts, screams, struggles away from the pain so fierce it threatens to suffocate him. The water foams crimson around him as he struggles to pull himself out, but every time he comes close to finding purchase on the slippery rocks, he loses his grip and is sent plummeting back into the water. 

A shout, a snarl, that he feels more than hears, and suddenly he is finds himself weightless again, flying through the air in a spray of sea water and hazy pain, to land with a rough jolt on the rocks. His head is thrown back on the slender stalk of his neck, pearls clicking together, not enough time for panic to set in as his head smacks, wet-sounding, against the rocks. His vision flickers in and out - 

_ darkness and light  _

_ darkness and light  _

_ darkness and piercing cyan _

And yet, before blue is swallowed up by black, Levi thinks that he is lucky, because Erwin will grant his wish, he will be devoured and consumed, the ultimate sacrifice to love, and he cannot think of a better way to die.


	10. Lapis

Levi's days are colored rosy, tinted with the fever haze of pain and nausea. He opens his eyes, stalactites and the lapis of Erwin's eyes - concerned? angry? something between the two? - slipping into his field of vision for brief instants before swinging wildly away. Cool hands sooth across his fevered brow, wiping away sweat and placing cool compresses of spongy sea moss, soaked with the sea, against his forehead. His head is lifted, gently, gently, the cool smoothness of the conch shell pressed against his cracked lips, trickling the sweet chill of fresh, pure water through his mouth, soothing his parched throat even as his body tries to reject it, gagging splashes of water across the rocks. 

"Darling." Erwin's voice is a steady undercurrent to his delirium. "Darling, shh, I know it hurts, be good, have a drink for me." Levi swallows, forces himself to keep it down, one mouthful, another. Erwin's palms are cool and soothing against his forehead as he strokes Levi's hair, tender, smoothing it back out of his eyes. "Good boy, good, that's good..." 

Levi is dimly aware of a throbbing ache at the back of his head, is more aware of the stinging fire that claws its way up his thighs whenever he so much as twitches, whenever Erwin drags him over to the bleached white coral bowl to relieve himself. He groans, protests, weak and powerless, but Erwin quells his flailing limbs with a stern look and a firm order that has Levi willing his straining muscles to obey. 

A day comes when he finds that he is able to sit up with the stalactites remaining firmly lodged on the ceiling where they belong, when he manages to take a mouthful of water and not have to force himself to keep it down. Erwin looks at him with approval, a smile, soft soothing salve against his wounds. He stands up, gingerly, Erwin's gaze following him with mild concern, teeters over to one of the coral bowls lining the wall, reaching for the conch shell bobbing at the surface to scoop up big mouthfuls of water. Every cell in his body aches of thirst, of desperate need, and he swallows greedily, one sip two ten, until Erwin gently reminds him that he will make himself sick if he drinks too much too quickly. He turns back, legs still unsteady beneath him, to look at Erwin. 

"What happened?" Levi asks, his stomach starting to growl, ravenous. He clings shakily to the water basin, trying to will himself to move. He remembers in fractions, lapis and slate and ochre, a riot of colors and motion tilting his head in spirals. He remembers pain, sharp and biting its way up his legs, remembers the salt sting of the sea, remembers...remembers, what, exactly? Erwin's voice, drumming a steady tattoo into his consciousness, Erwin's hands stroking back sweaty locks of hair, Erwin's lips, cool against his forehead, drawing out the fevered heat. 

"Come here." Erwin's voice is a command, leaves no room for argument, and despite the fact that Levi can barely take a few steps, he must follow, must obey, must grant at least this one request because he has already indebted himself for millions of lifetimes already. 

And so it is, on hands and knees, Levi crawls, pitiful and weak, towards Erwin's touch, and he adores every moment of it, every shift of rock pressing painful into his bare knees, the slick of cold water against the heels of his hands. 

"Good boy," Erwin says, and Levi can hear the smile in his voice as Erwin hoists him up, easy, light, into the moss bedding, wrapping him in his tail. The pearls of Levi's necklace tap together, no longer tight, and Erwin clicks his tongue in disapproval. 

"You've grown thin, darling," Erwin murmurs, his fingers tracing the jutting reaches of Levi's ribs. "We will have to remedy that. You were so sick, for so long, I was truly afraid I was going to lose you." 

Levi finds himself dizzy at the knowledge, at the power he has, at the abilities Erwin has given him in a few sweeping words. 

"Do you think you can manage to eat a bit for me, hmm?" Erwin asks, his hand stroking gentle down the knobs of Levi's vertebrae. "I would be so happy if you would." 

Levi nods, body and mind eager to please, and Erwin smiles in satisfaction as he shreds a roasted fish, fresh from the coals, in his hands. Flaky flesh, made delicious with the taste of Erwin's skin as Erwin holds it up to Levi's lips in pinches and mouthfuls, and Levi devours everything. Ravenous. Starving. Growing. 

* * *

 

As he regains his strength, Levi finds himself examining the scars on his legs more and more. They are nasty, scabs still quick to bleed at minor provocations, and he can't help but notice how Erwin turns his face away whenever Levi provokes them into spilling crimson across his thighs. Dark, curving things, from knee to his hip bones. 

_ Claw marks.  _

The thought comes to him one day while Erwin is out, hunting for food to sate Levi's ever-increasing appetite. Curious, a bit fearful, Levi lifts a hand, places his fingers delicate against his thigh. The width, the spread, the sharpness of Levi's nails, it matches, and he swallows roughly, abject terror.

Erwin's words come back. _"You actively try to die, for reasons I cannot seem to fathom."_ And here he is, again, disappointed, disappointing. He isn't actively trying to die, Levi is sure of that fact, but this, these marks, these scratches, all indicate otherwise. His mind fights against his body's nature, rages against the form he has been born in, and his body, so like an animal, fights back, snarls and screams and bleeds in its efforts to protect itself. 

A gleam of blue and silver catches the corner of his eye, and he leans over, reaching, curious. His fingers come into contact with something smooth, something razor sharp against his fingertip, and he reaches out, careful, to wrap his fingers around the clam shell Erwin had used to cut his hair, pulling it out from the shadows of the clinging sea moss that drags on the floor from their bedding. 

An idea begins to sprout in Levi's mind, digging in deep roots, branching ebony, and when he hears the splashes that signify Erwin's return, he shoves the clam shell quickly beneath the moss, where it will not be seen, and folds his hands, angelic, in his lap, the picture of obedience.

* * *

It takes ages for the pearls to feel tight around Levi's throat again, but he is delighted, overjoyed, ecstatic when he finds it hard to swallow, when he finds it difficult to breathe, when he finds that he can feel the delicious, aching pain of the sea nettle thread against his skin again. It is a pain that he has sorely missed, and one that, inexplicably, leaves him hungry for more, aching for fulfillment. 

The gashes on his legs have healed, a silvery red against his milky skin, and Erwin traces them on occasion, fingertips skimming across the raised flesh and sending shivers tingling up Levi's spine. 

"Beautiful," Erwin muses, and Levi wants to cry, because how can he possibly be beautiful, how can he possibly be pretty with these ugly marks darting up his legs, showing infallible proof of his human weakness? How can he possibly be Erwin's good boy when he still takes the clam shell out from beneath the piles of moss, stares at its razor edge for hours when Erwin isn't there? 

"You know," Erwin murmurs, pressing a kiss to the underside of Levi's jaw, mouth trailing down his neck, sucking bites into his jugular where his pulse is drumming a rapid tattoo, "your legs are lovely, beautiful canvases. I cannot particularly imagine why you would want to rid yourself of them." 

He parts them, sweet and easy in Levi's eager surrender, presses a kiss to the tip of Levi's cock, which twitches with interest. He takes one of Levi's thighs in clawed palm, hooks it over his shoulder for better access, for more flexibility. Levi watches with bated breath, as erwin nips, razor sharp and just this side of painful, at the insides of his thighs, so close, so far from where he needs it, wants it the most. 

"Don't be naughty anymore, alright?" Erwin asks him, his words hot puffs of steam against Levi's cock, which has started to stiffen, rosy and flushed from neglect. "Be a good boy. Good boys don't touch things that don't belong to them."

Levi swallows, rough, nods. He knows he has been horrifically bad, horrifically sinful, exemplifying immorality, his humanity furthering it along. Gluttony, gorging himself on Erwin's kisses and the food that he can never seem to keep stored away for later; pride, admiring obsidian bright eyes in the reflection of the water; lust, cock aching, achingly, terrifyingly human, in the clasp of Erwin's hand. 

Greed? Assuredly so. He is greedy beyond belief, and the initial guilt he feels about it is washed away by the sheer emptiness he feels inside him. Is it not enough, Erwin's mouth, Erwin's hands, the sleek narrow coils of the end of Erwin's tail as it wraps around him and strokes him to an early surrender? It was, once, but Levi wants, desires, needs more in a way that terrifies and excites him. 

"Your hand, please," he murmurs, his mouth dry, panting, his hips canting into Erwin's hand, into whatever touches Erwin is ready to give. "Give it to me." 

Erwin looks amused, his thumb pressing into the weeping slit, collecting the pearly liquid that beads there. "You already have it, my sweet," he says, with a laugh, but Levi shakes his head, flustered, desperate, the pearl choker around his neck flashing in the firelight. 

"I'm too empty," he croaks, hating and loving how needy he sounds. Erwin has unmade him, has shattered him, and he has no desire to pick up the pieces for reassembly. "I need it." 

Erwin raises an eyebrow, and Levi wishes he could bite back his words. He doesn't need it, he berates himself. He doesn't need anything that Erwin has not already given him, and he is greedy, spoilt and drunk and intoxicated with avarice. 

"Demanding boy," Erwin says after a moment, and when Levi manages to peek out from under lowered lashes, he finds to his surprise that Erwin is smiling. The fingers of Erwin's free hand are pressed against his lips; he opens his mouth, instinctive, inviting, sighs in delight as he tastes sea and skin against his tongue. 

The fingers are taken away, quicker than he'd like, and he barely has time to grumble about the loss when fingers dip down between his legs, touching, prodding, caressing. Pressing, pressure. He wills his body to accept, because it is Erwin and he will be damned if he fails at something as simple as this; the first finger is long, warm, slick. It is excellent in the burn and stretch, and Levi craves more, more, more, hips arching towards Erwin's hand, wanton. 

The second is no better, leaving an ache like a wound, warming him from the inside out. Erwin stretches, scissors, and Levi shudders at the inferno molten inside him, begging for release. It is then that Erwin pulls away, everything gone, entirely, but the heat lingers. 

"Why...?" Levi asks, breathless, needy. 

"Consider this training," Erwin says, simply, with a smile that Levi feels is far too joyful for the occasion. "A prize at the end, and not before." 

Erwin curls his hand into a fist, extends his fingers again, experimentally, and Levi's eyes are drawn to the flexing digits with a heady rush of fear and anticipation. 

"And you are my good boy, aren't you?" Erwin asks him, smile gentler, wider. "You'll see this request out to the end, especially because you asked." 

Levi nods fervently, the fear replaced with euphoria at the title Erwin has given him, that he has come to regard as his own. Of course he is Erwin's good boy. Levi Ackerman has never been anything but that, and he cannot think of any better way to be broken. 

* * *

 

Levi's days come to be dominated by thoughts of Erwin's promise, alternate overwhelming terror and desperate desire. He eats, he grows, he becomes looser around Erwin's probing fingers and all but forgets about the razor clam somewhere in the moss beneath his writhing body. 

Erwin stretches him, watching Levi with piercing lapis eyes, examining him for every twitch, every burbled whimper, every choked off sob as his fingers prod and stroke along velvet walls. Levi's cock aches between his legs, throbbing, half-hard already when Erwin even so much as looks at him, and he wants to blush in remorse, in humiliation, wants to cover himself up with his hands, but Erwin is right. Good boys don't touch things that don't belong to them. 

The day comes when Erwin can wriggle four fingers into Levi, knuckles and joints pressed tight up against Levi's pulsing heat, and Levi is half gone already, breaths shallow and sobbing in his lungs, so hard and so desperate that he would come if Erwin even so much as hinted at the order. Erwin watches him carefully, and Levi flushes under his scrutiny, at the picture he must make, head thrown back, sweat gleaming in the hollow of his throat to match the glimmer of the pearls tight against his neck. His cock juts from the junction of his legs, rosy, weeping, aching desperate, his hips arching frantic into Erwin's touch. 

"Gorgeous, precious doll," Erwin murmurs, sucking a kiss rough into Levi's thigh. Levi has to choke back a scream, has to curl his fingers tight into his palms, scarlet crescents, to keep himself from coming. "Do you think you can take another, or would you like to stop here? I won't be disappointed if you say no." 

"No, no," Levi huffs, trying to calm himself down. "Keep - keep going. Please," he begs, voice shivery with need. "I want." 

"Of course you do," Erwin says, razor smile. "This will hurt," he says, gently petting Levi's thigh with his free hand. "But I can assure you it will be worth it." 

Levi nods, gritting his teeth, preparing. Of course it will be worth it; any other way would be laughable. Anything that Erwin does, anything that he puts him through, will be worth it by the laws of nature and the consuming adoration that Levi has for him. 

The pressure on his thigh increases, Erwin leaning against it a bit, wriggling his fingers, the tip of his thumb pressing tight, tight, too tight, working its way in, and Levi takes deep, controlled breaths through his teeth. 

"Shh, shh, it's alright," Erwin murmurs softly, pressing a kiss to the inside of Levi's knee. "You're doing so well, darling." 

The pressure is exquisite, the burn magnificent in every stretch and every tingle of pain that lances its way up Levi's spine, and he shudders, twitching relentlessly, his body surrendering completely as Erwin manages the stretch, his hand pressing in delicate and overwhelming, and for the first time in his life, Levi feels full, full to bursting, overflowing, and he wants to cry at how excellent it feels. Pain and pleasure mingle indiscriminate, and Levi feels fulfilled. He chances a look down, crying out as the shift forces one of Erwin's knuckles against his prostate, sobs futile as he writhes desperate on Erwin's hand. 

"Please," he begs, breath hissing through his teeth, "please, Erwin." 

"Please, what?" Erwin looks vaguely amused, eyes and smile predatory. "Too much?"

Levi shakes his head, fingers clenching in the sea moss beneath him as he sobs for breath. It is too much, it is not enough, and he wants less, but he needs more. Indescribable, incomprehensible. 

"Please, Erwin, can I?" he asks, his lips quivering around the words. "I've been good, I have." 

"Have you?" Erwin asks, his voice almost a hum as he rolls his knuckles over the tiny bundle of nerves nestled inside Levi. Levi screams this time, really, truly, the sound echoing around the cave and bouncing off the rocks and stalactites. It is too much, it is far too much, and he feels like he can taste the color white against his tongue.

"Yes, I have, I have, I have," he sobs, his words tripping over each other, the most exquisite of agonies. "I'm a good boy, I swear, I swear I am." 

"Oh? Whose good boy are you?" Erwin asks, grinning, massaging rough. Sparks, stars, corals of every color swim over Levi's vision, and he is sure that he is going insane.

"Yours," he shrieks, "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm..." His voice trails off into a wail, half-sob, half-scream as Erwin rolls his knuckles almost viciously against Levi's prostate, the ordered growl to come barely audible beneath Levi's cries as he splatters his stomach with ivory. 

He is dizzy, breathless, stunned and twitching from overstimulation as Erwin gently pulls out, wriggling thumb out first, then the fingers following, a firm hand placed against Levi's stomach to ease its removal. 

"Did you enjoy yourself, Levi?" Erwin asks, after he has cleaned off his hand with a dip in the sea, coiling himself around Levi and tracing lazy patterns over his chest with the tip of one finger. "Was it what you expected it would be?"

"It was better," Levi admits, words drowsy and slurred. "I love you," he adds, almost an afterthought, as he rolls easy into his dreams, body sore and aching deliciously. 

Erwin pauses, freezes, but Levi is already asleep, breathing deep and slow, and does not hear a reply. 


	11. Cornflower

Erwin makes good on his promise to take Levi to the ship wreck a while later; Levi counts the time span as four dreams and one half thought nightmare, for lack of a more accurate measurement. Even in his dreams, Erwin is never far, cornflower eyes and tail coloring Levi's subconscious desires with blue, overwhelming, the best suffocation that Levi knows. His half thought nightmare is colored green, a deep poisonous emerald that surrounds Levi on all sides, swallows him from the feet up, filling his nose, his mouth, every vein and every artery with toxin. He forgets the dream almost as soon as he wakes up, because Erwin is there, Erwin has always been there, the blue calm of the sea a tender balm against Levi's fright. 

Erwin helps him slip on the tail - Levi still can't bear to look at the silver-red jagged scars that line his thighs, can't bring himself to accept the fact that maybe he is vicious, something to be kept under lock and chain, can't comprehend how he is Erwin's wholly and completely and yet not at all. The lips of the tail wrap neatly about his waist, the soothing arms of a long-lost lover, and Levi takes to the water again, welcomes its chilly embrace with its overwhelming familiarity, dips his head beneath the surface to once again savor the sting of salt against his eyes. Erwin takes him by the hand, drags him down, and he traces the medley of bubbles that flicker upward from the motions of their limbs, trailing endless to the surface. 

Erwin tugs him through the sea grass, pressing occasional kisses to Levi's mouth along the way, the sweetest oxygen that Levi has ever tasted. The fish dart out as they pass through, circling Levi's wrists like bracelets, swimming quicksilver up the long fluid lines of their bodies, gleaming green and blue as their scales reflect the vivid colors of their tails. Their shadows are long, lissome darkness against the sea grass bed, and Levi turns his head, looks up in wonder at the openness of it all. Erwin pauses, treading water, and Levi bumps into him, unable to stop himself in time. 

Erwin's eyes are watchful, curious, as they follow Levi's gaze up to where the water turns aquamarine, to where the light far off is blotted out by a long, dark shape.

A boat, Levi's mind supplies him with, but he pushes away the thought. His brain has an irritating habit of making up words. 

"Do you want to return, darling?" Erwin asks, and Levi knows that he isn't talking about the cave. Return? he wonders curiously to himself, as he shakes his head, a definitive no. How can he possibly return to a place he's never been? 

He turns to press a kiss to Erwin's mouth, reassurance, breath, life. The very idea is laughable; he cannot imagine a world without Erwin in it, cannot imagine a world colored blue and speckled silver. Even as he watches, something dark and thickly woven is dropped into the water, descending deep, deep, deep. Erwin makes a noise of disgust beside him as the object drops further into the depths, out of sight beyond the rocky ledges of a cliff that Levi has never looked past before. 

"Don't look at it anymore," he says, turning Levi's attention firmly back to him. What is it? Levi wants to ask, but Erwin's lips are pursed tightly together around the answer, loosening only the slightest bit when Levi licks at the seam tentatively, to ask for air. 

He follows Erwin's lead, kicking his legs in synchrony, the tail translating his fumbling motions into elegant glides that propel him smoothly, neatly through the water, and it is with a sort of pride that Levi finds he no longer needs to cling to Erwin so tightly. He skims his hand along the fine silty sand of the ocean floor, watching in rapt awe as his fingertips dance delicate over the top of a sleeping manta ray who barely twitches beneath his curious touch. A horseshoe crab races him, much to his delight, scuttling and skittering and kicking up milky sand in its wake as it follows the elongated shape of Levi's shadow. The crab stops, sudden riotous motion quieted into soft brown stillness, its legs wiggling uncertainly, and Levi stops, too, looking down at its still form for a moment before looking back up to where Erwin has paused again, the smooth, strong planes of his back milky in the weak beams of light from that other world. 

Curious, Levi swims up beside him, lets go of his entire allowance of breath, massive bubbles flickering up into nonexistence, as he takes in what lies before them. 

Underneath them, where the horseshoe crab is still quivering, uncertain, the ocean floor drops away into a deep valley, and if Levi strains his eyes enough, he can just make out large beams jutting out of the murky darkness. Dark shadows, large enough for Levi to discern from here, flit in front of the beams. "Are you scared?" Erwin asks, his voice gentle, perhaps picking up on the sudden stutter of Levi's heartbeat. 

Levi shakes his head, but this time, it is tentative. Unsure. Uncertain, and he feels almost guilty because he is with Erwin, and that should be safety and reassurance enough. 

"It's okay, darling," Erwin murmurs against Levi's mouth now, pressing in soft streams of air to massage Levi's aching lungs. Levi's hand reaches up of its own accord, fingertips tentative and trembling against the fluttering flaps of flesh lining the sides of Erwin's neck where he can feel the water pulsing in and out. Through Erwin and into him. The thought makes him giddy. "They won't hurt you. I'll kill them before they do." The words are soft, but darkened with an oath, solemn vows, and a shiver runs up the curve of Levi's spine at the tone of his words.  

Never a threat, always a promise, and Levi allows Erwin to tug him forward, their shadows disappearing as they glide into the darkness. 

The water here is colder, darker, and Levi keeps a tight grip on Erwin's hand as he is pulled forward through the gloom. The fish here are slower, larger, mouths open wide to display bottomless pits of ebony hunger. The weeds that grow down here wrap themselves caressingly around Levi's arms, soft, slick, sucking slimy when Levi flicks his wrist to dislodge their grip. When he looks up at Erwin, he can barely make out his expression, can barely make out anything past the contours of his face. 

As they approach the middle of the valley, detritus starts to disrupt the smooth weedy softness of the seabed, sharp edges and sealed corners that have no business being here in this fluid universe. Levi runs his fingers curious over their surfaces, pulling fingertips stained mossy from the lichens that have already started to grow and devour the remains, churning molecules into molecules, rebuilt reborn renewed. 

A dark shape darts past Levi's tail, the vibrations working themselves into the bones of his legs beneath the emerald sheath, but when he turns to look, whirls around, he cannot distinguish one gloaming shadow from another, and he clings to Erwin with even tighter fervor, his heartbeat starting to pulse staccato beneath the embrace of the bones of his rib cage. He is sure that Erwin can hear it, loud as it is, a tattoo of nervousness and fear. 

This is new, this is frightening, this self-imposed blindness, the only certainty Erwin's hand wrapped around his own. Levi trusts the way Erwin navigates around the debris, tries to ignore how he can just make out little quicksilver flashes out of the corners of his vision, milky ovals gliding in and out of vision, limp and unclear. 

He wants to tell Erwin to turn back, is just mustering up the courage to reach out and tap Erwin's wrist, his skin ridged with goose bumps, when there is a voice. Silky, syllables waterlogged, one that Levi has never heard before. 

"Who's this precious doll, Erwin?" 

Levi turns to look, his eyes wide against the darkness of the water. The face before him is frightening in its beauty, terrifyingly gorgeous, steel wrapped in silk, a cold cruelty icy in the soft syllables her full lips pulse around. Her skin is milky in the dim light that filters down from the curtains of the other world, hair gleaming a burnished gold in a halo around her head. One slender hand, claw-tipped and sharp, rests against a beam of the ship, milky skin on dark wood the perfect juxtaposition, and she tilts her head to examine Levi from another angle, eyes gleaming gimlet as the slashes of flesh lining her neck flutter, deep inhalations, scenting, bubbles spiraling up dizzy towards a surface that Levi can no longer imagine. 

Erwin draws Levi close to him, hand pressed against the small of his back, and though he can only make out the underside of Erwin's jaw, Levi can feel the tenseness and rigidity in the way his fingers are splayed out across Levi's skin. Protective. Defensive. Possessive. 

"He's mine." The words are a snarl, soft, chilling either way. 

"Oh?" Her lips pout in a moue of annoyance, the expression flickering away as quickly as it's come as she turns a smile on to Levi, saccharine sweet. "Is that true, sweet boy?" 

Levi nods, frantically, the chill of her fingertips against his face too much for him to bear as he darts around behind Erwin's back, peeking out from behind a shoulder to where she is laughing, the sound throaty and full, vibrato through the water. His lungs are starting to ache. 

"Marie, why are you here?" Erwin asks, his voice reassuring, melodic. Marie sighs dramatically, sending a whoosh of bubbles fluttering across Levi's face as she fans a hand through her hair. Her left hand is holding on to something white, something milky that Levi can't make out no matter how hard he squints, something that disappears behind a pile of jutting wreckage belonging to the ship only a few dark glides beneath them. 

"My darling, Nile, just _had_ to come by," she says, with a little giggle. "He wanted to see where he came from." She gestures to the wreck beneath them, arm sweeping grandly to encompass the valley. "Lucky for him, I remembered." 

Her voice is tilting, slanting in the oddest possible way, her vowels and consonants sawing up and down in a jagged tone that's half a laugh and half something Levi doesn't want to identify. 

"But yours must be new," she says, gesturing to Levi, who burrows farther into Erwin's back in an attempt to evade scrutiny. "He hasn't gotten all fat yet. And is that a tail of yours he's wearing? That's adorable." She smiles - well, more like leers - if Levi is being honest - at him, and Levi shies away. His lungs are stinging, desperate with the need for air. 

"Yes, he is rather attractive, isn't he?" Erwin asks, and Levi can hear the pride in his voice, and he thinks he can bear the burn a bit longer.  

"Much," Marie agrees. "Lots of us got ours from here." She gestures to the wreck below. Levi's eyes have adjusted slightly to the darkness, and he can just make out the faint, long shapes of what he presumes are other sirens, each attached to a milky object bobbing along in their wake. What are those? he wonders, mind itching with curiosity. 

"Is there some event happening today?" Erwin asks, his voice tinted with disgust. "Why are there so many here?" 

"Oh, you know how pets get, so impatient," Marie says, laughing again. "All of them want to know so badly where they come from, even though we do our best to take such good care of them!" The last exclamation is almost angry, almost furious, and Levi jumps at the tone in her voice. "They still want more, more, more, it's so infuriating listening to them cry about how they want to go home. As if they weren't already home." 

Levi privately agrees; home is where Erwin is, and that fact has never changed for as long as Levi has been alive. He cannot imagine another existence without Erwin, not in his wildest imaginations. 

"And so rude, too," Marie mutters, her voice dark, before abruptly switching to a tender croon. "Darling, don't be rude, stop hiding behind that ugly block of wood. Why don't you come out and say hello to Erwin?" 

Levi watches, eyes wide, from beneath Erwin's arm as Marie jerks her left hand towards her, dragging the milky object into view. 

Milky hand attached to milky arm, attached to milky torso. Eyes, wide open, blank, dark hair seaweed soft flicking over its forehead, lips parted, a silent murmur. Marie giggles, almost childishly, and waves its hand in a mimicry of a greeting. 

"Sorry, he's just a bit shy," she explains, and Levi watches, a dull sense of horror pitting its way through his stomach, as Marie's tail, pearly silver, wraps itself around the man's waist, swallowing his legs in chrome. He feels two steps removed, because certainly the rigid set of Erwin's back implies that something is wrong, something is horrifyingly, hideously wrong, but Levi cannot distinguish what exactly he is supposed to feel frightened about. 

Oh! He stumbles upon it, then. It must be because Marie doesn't love her pet as much as Erwin loves him. That must be it. The man's neck, fat, doesn't have a pearl necklace wrapped around it, doesn't have anything to signify that he is Marie's, and Levi grins to himself, because it's yet another proof that Erwin loves and adores and cherishes him more than anyone else. 

His lungs are burning now, an inferno, and he cannot wait a moment longer; Levi tugs himself around to Erwin's front, reaches up to press a kiss to Erwin's mouth, inhales oxygen hungry and greedy, his heart thumping a staccato in his chest. Marie watches, pearl eyes narrowed slightly, as Erwin's hand tangles itself in Levi's hair, fitting their mouths together seamless so no stray burbles of oxygen escape. 

"Why are you doing that?" Marie asks, suspicious. Out of the corner of his eye, Levi can just make out the shapes of the other sirens, silhouetted against the deep blue of the sea, bobbing motionless around them as they watch. Pairs of eyes, gimlet glares of silver and amethyst and emerald, gleam through the darkness. Watching. Studying, pets drifting listless by their sides. 

Erwin doesn't answer immediately, lets Levi have as much of his air as he needs, until his heart stops pounding erratic and he pulls away. Even then, he maintains a soft, steady grip on the roots of Levi's hair. Possessive. Protective. 

Marie gasps, her hands coming up to frame her face and her look of surprise. Her pet bobs, head flopping forward, milky. Levi thinks that her pet is particularly lazy, and privately resolves that he would never act like that, especially not when Erwin has been so kind as to bring him out and meet his friends. 

"Oh, you love him, don't you?" Marie asks, her voice a high-pitched trill of a giggle. Around them, soft burbles of laughter coat the water, assaulting Levi's ears with softness. "That's why you gave him such a pretty necklace." 

Levi feels, more than sees, Erwin's nod of affirmation; the knowledge leaves him giddy, head whirling, colors leaching into one another, as Erwin takes him by the hand and starts to drag him away. Silver, emerald, amethyst, interspersed with the gleaming milk of skin, spiral around his vision; the sirens part for Erwin to drag him through, eyes trailing along Levi's body, lingering on the place where his waist dips into the soothing green of the tail. Levi thinks they must be admiring how beautiful it is, admiring how much Erwin loves him. 

And now it's been affirmed for him, Erwin's acknowledgment all that he needs. Erwin's grip, tight on his hand, must be because he doesn't want Levi to drift away in the current; the tense set of Erwin's mouth must be because he doesn't want the other sirens looking at Levi too long, he's too beautiful, attractive, lovely and gorgeous and darling. 

Erwin doesn't let go of his hand until they're safely in the plains of sea grass again, and Levi finds his fingers aching from the force of his grip. He massages his hand, watches as the dark netted object from earlier ascends from the depths, blocking out the flickering light from above with its bulging load of fish. He starts to swim toward it, curious, but Erwin clears his throat, gives him a pointed look, and Levi pulls away, turning back towards Erwin and the only existence he has ever known. 

 


	12. Turquoise

Erwin skirts around Levi for the next few days, leaving him alone for hours at a time, and Levi feels irrationally guilty about it. Surely it is his fault, surely he's done something or said something or thought something he wasn't supposed to, and surely Erwin is displeased. 

When Erwin is with him, when Erwin deigns to grace him with his presence, Levi can't help but notice the way Erwin looks at him out of the corner of turquoise eyes when he thinks Levi doesn't see. His expression is a mixture of amusement, concern, a flickering interest that flickers just as quickly away whenever Levi looks fully at him or otherwise demands his attention. 

Levi spends his waking hours absorbed in self-pity, a glutton for punishment that Erwin is assuredly too kind to dole out himself. Is it so much to ask to want to have Erwin look at him like he used to, lovely and gentle and tenderly affectionate? 

If he is being honest, it is all Marie's fault, Levi thinks angrily to himself one morning, curled up in the indent in the spongy sea moss Erwin has left behind; the soft lichen presses up against his limbs, broad as he fills the hollow, leaching up Erwin's warmth. None of this would have happened if Marie hadn't been there, he's quite sure of it. And Nile, or whatever his name was, certainly didn't help things along. Levi is sure Erwin's recent behavior has everything to do with them, and, like usual, his thoughts drift to where Erwin is at this present moment, what he is doing, what he is eating, who he is seeing. 

Perhaps he loves Marie. Mind, traitorous, whispering into the base of his skull as he paces back and forth, twenty steps in either direction, the soles of his feet slapping slick against the wet stones. Perhaps that was why he was so upset. From what Levi recalls, Marie was certainly beautiful, burnished blonde hair milky in the wavering light, ivory skin dipping neatly into unmarred pearly scales. 

And it goes back to that. It always goes back to that! His legs, and the despicable presence thereof. 

He has, more than a few times, tugged out the clam shell, rubbing its razor point over his thumb and admiring the beads of crimson that well up along the whorls of his fingertip. He pops his thumb in his mouth, rolling his tongue over the flat of his skin, relishing the soothing taste of metal. He has, more than a few times, traced the edge of the shell around the swell of his hipbone, has, more than a few times, pressed a bit more deeply than intended, drawing carmine lines across ivory skin. It is only a testament to Erwin's disappointment in him that he doesn't mention the scarlet parallels that Levi draws on himself. 

Pathetic, his mind hisses, and Levi privately agrees. A play for attention, needy, greedy, avaricious, and how can Erwin possibly want someone like Levi? He stuffs the clam shell deep beneath the sea moss bedding and snugs himself into the emerald shell of the tail that he is absurdly grateful Erwin hasn't yet thought to take away. He accepts the smallest of privileges, and finds himself slowly rocked to sleep in the gentle pulsing heat of the scales swallowing his limbs, warmth wriggling its way beneath his skin. 

And that's another thing, too, he muses to himself as he rolls sleepily into the hollow Erwin has left behind in the sea moss bedding. He hasn't worn this tail in ages, not for swimming, at least, because Erwin deflects his questions with soft susurruses of sweet nothings that intoxicate Levi to the point of forgetting. He misses the ocean's salty cool embrace, misses the soft stream of Erwin's kisses laced with saline. Erwin's kisses here are still given freely, but Levi can't help but feel it's as though he's struggling to breathe.

That is how Erwin comes upon him that evening, piles of fish still flopping frantic in the woven seaweed bag over his shoulder. Levi is curled up, the ridges of his vertebrae milky knobs beneath his skin, his waist swallowed up by emerald and turquoise. Levi wakes at the splashing that signals Erwin's return, sits up, swimming out of his dreams. 

"Well now, darling, what's all this?" Erwin's tone is amused - is that a hint of concern? - as he drags himself over to Levi, and Levi has to take a moment to understand exactly what Erwin is referring to. 

"I missed you," he says, all too truthfully, as Erwin lifts the heft of the tail in one hand. "We don't go anywhere anymore." 

Erwin tenses; Levi can feel the slick grip Erwin has on his ankle through the scales tighten, and he bites his lip, wanting to take the words back. He's all too aware of how it sounds, needy, desperate, demanding, and the last is the one he fears most of all. 

"Sorry," he whispers, trying to make amends. Erwin's grip relaxes, but only just. 

"You know I love you," Erwin murmurs after a short moment, during which Levi makes hundreds of private promises, resolving to be a better boy for Erwin, resolving to be good and deserving of Erwin's love, graciously given and easily taken away. "What does my good boy need, hmm?" He places a finger beneath Levi's chin, tilts his face up so that grey meets turquoise. "I apologize if I've been leaving you alone more, recently."

"No, no," Levi hastens to make amends. "I just -" He gestures, haplessly, to the tail, where milky limbs are swallowed by viridian. He just what, exactly? I miss you, I need you, I want you. I love you. A descent into madness, whirling, traces of sapphire and emerald and pearl. Erwin. Marie. Erwin and Marie. He hates the way the cadence of their names rolls off his tongue, easy like the syllables belong together. 

Erwin and Levi. He tries it now, feeling it out in his mouth. 

"You miss me, I know," Erwin murmurs gently, his hand tracing up to cradle Levi's face, thumb stroking along the swell of his cheekbone, brushing against fluttering eyelashes. "And I miss you, too, darling. It kills me to be away for so long, missing your words, your laughter, your thoughts." 

"They're all about you," Levi whispers, truthful, and Erwin smiles. Levi can't help but notice that it doesn't reach his eyes. 

Erwin feeds him that night, fish just this side of undercooked, but Levi doesn't mind, hasn't minded for a very long time, because he is now the center of Erwin's attention again and the only thing occupying his thoughts is how to keep it that way. Erwin's tail coils around his waist, wraps below to where his legs are pressed tight together by the end of the tail.

"Take this off," Erwin murmurs, nipping at the curve of Levi's ear, his hand resting light on the swell of Levi's hip below the emerald lips of the tail. "I want to see you in all your human glory." The last words are whispered into the shell of his ear, and a shudder tingles its way down his spine, his hands hastening to obey. 

Resistance, the tail stuck slick around his waist. This has never happened before, and Levi wriggles his legs, trying to dislodge it. It resists the separation, and suddenly Erwin's hands are there, pulling, tugging. Levi can't make out his expression from this angle, and his heart starts a quick tattoo in his chest, excitement, nervousness, a slight twinge of arousal because this is the first time Erwin will have touched him in ages...

Erwin mutters a curse under his breath, something in a slithery sort of language that has chills spilling down Levi's spine. His hands work deftly at the tail, pulling, fingers slipping beneath slick scale and smooth skin to break the seal of their joining, muttering all the while. 

"Let go," Erwin all but snarls, and Levi feels something shift, dislodging, and the tail starts to slip off, reluctant in its departure. He gasps as the tail slips off, almost surprised to find himself confronted with milky skin, almost shocked to feel cool air against his flesh again. Pain lances up in little barbs at the soft insides of his knees, and he hisses, wincing, all too aware that Erwin's turquoise eyes are cataloging every reaction. 

"Sweetness, what have you done?" Erwin asks, once the tail is off, fully coiled and sheathed green at Levi's feet. A finger traces cautiously up sore scarlet lines, and Levi relishes the burn because it means Erwin sees, Erwin knows, Erwin loves him despite of his failures. 

He is bleeding, fresh, warm trickles down the backs of his legs, and he can see the strips of flesh on the sides of Erwin's neck fluttering. Deep breaths, now. Temptation, obsidian starting to swallow the blue away. He welcomes it, welcomes and even encourages the savage lust that spills over into Erwin's gaze. Breathless, watching as Erwin slowly lowers himself to the rock, gold on slate, pressing a kiss to the side of Levi's knee, tracing the trickle with a tongue sandpaper smooth against his skin. 

Levi shivers, lifts his leg a bit, adoration at the thrill of Erwin's teeth, razor sharp, nipping at his skin as he sucks at the cuts. Wanting, wanton. It's not a place he remembers sinking the edge of the clam shell into, but he almost wishes he had thought of it sooner if he had known it would elicit this sort of response. He is drunk on madness, a hand absentmindedly reaching out to card through the seaweed softness of golden hair as Erwin licks away the traces of his inadvertent naughtiness. 

_Finally_ , he thinks to himself, thoughts of Marie gone as Erwin looks up at him with dark, hooded eyes, blood turning the swell of his lower lip crimson. _Finally, I have you._  


	13. Teal

Levi knows he is ungrateful, is all too aware of his blatant lack of gratitude. Erwin loves him without measure, beyond what the scope of his words can convey, of this Levi is sure, and yet it is not enough. He needs more, craves it like he craves the cool sting of salt against his wounds whenever he lazily dips himself into the water burbling up into the cavern. 

He needs to be rendered breathless, scrabbling for survival against Erwin's mouth and taking his satisfaction from plush lips. He needs to be reined back in, dominated, needs to feel small, because now that he has tasted the open ocean, now that he has found freedom, he is intoxicated and shivering from the pangs of withdrawal. 

Erwin has expressly forbidden him to wear the tail anymore, but he is gone for vast hours of Levi's waking hours, and Levi sees no harm in what Erwin won't know. The tail, as it slips slick over his limbs and pinches in at his waist, is warm and lovely and breathing against his skin, giving him the affection and attention that Erwin has denied him of for so long. 

There is a bit of pain this morning as he slips it on, a pinching, prickling sensation wriggling beneath the tender skin of his inner thighs and the insides of his knees, but he reasons that perhaps he is just getting too big, eating too much for it. Going all fat. Marie's words hiss themselves into Levi's ears, but Levi brushes them away nonchalantly. Erwin is his, entranced and possessed, entrancing and possessive, and Marie cannot possibly pose any sort of threat anymore. 

The seawater has started to turn colder when he peeks out of the little grotto entrance, not daring to venture out too far lest he get swept away in the current. More oval shadows have started to cast themselves over the water, lowering nets into the depths to draw them up hours later, bulging with squirming, thrashing cargo. Levi dares not venture near. The fish that get swept up in the nets are pulled up towards the heavens, never to return, and Levi cannot imagine a world beyond, cannot imagine reaching out for Erwin and not being able to touch. 

"The sea is slipping into its autumn swells," Erwin tells him that evening, unknotting the kelp bag with deft fingers and upending huge fish onto the floor in front of Levi. They are still flopping, fresh, and Levi strikes them deftly over the head with a rock, gleeful as he notices Erwin watching him, almost mesmerized. He scales them, debones and guts them, before skewering them with sharpened sticks of driftwood and propping them over the guttering flames. He is ravenous, not enough, not enough, not enough, and pulls out a fish, the flesh still cold and slimy from the sea, biting into it and savoring the taste of metal in his mouth. 

"You will get sick," Erwin admonishes him, reaching out to tug the fish from his hands, but Levi swats him away. Hunger , roaring animalistic in the pit of his belly, drowns out his desire to apologize, to submit. Erwin sighs, holds his hands up in surrender. 

"What did you say about the autumn swells?" Levi asks, wincing as he bites his tongue in his overeagerness to chew and consume. He spits crimson. 

"The sea is getting colder," Erwin says, not meeting Levi's questioning gaze. "I will be leaving soon for warmer tides."

The fish drops out of Levi's hands, and suddenly it tastes too salty, too fishy, too coppery against his tongue. Leaving? No. Surely not. And 'I'? Levi wants to gag, because the implication in Erwin's voice is clear. Levi will not be coming along. 

"Can I come?" Levi asks, his voice barely a whisper, the pearls and stinging nettle suddenly too tight against his throat. He feels like he can barely breathe, weightless, crushed. 

"I cannot leave you here to die," Erwin says, a smile in his voice as he cradles Levi's face in his hand. But it isn't that, Levi wants to protest. It isn't the possibility of impending death that terrifies him. He would die, thousands of times over, just as long as it meant he would always have erwin. It is the thought of not being with him that sends an arrow of piercing coldness through the center of his heart. "I will return you to the surface." 

The surface? Levi's mind struggles to comprehend. Fish, lifted bodily out of their homes, a world he hasn't ever known, and Erwin is willing to fling him into this new atmosphere. No, no, no, he shakes his head violently, tears starting in his eyes, stinging. 

"No," he croaks, chokes. "I can't live up there." 

"You cannot hope to make the journey as you are, darling." Erwin's voice is soft, rational, soothing, and Levi wants to scream. "You would die." Erwin's hands drum against Levi's thighs, gently. Levi doesn't want gentleness, and he circles Erwin's wrists in his hands, thumbs meeting the tips of his middle fingers, like the most erotic of fetters. 

"So change me." It is not a request, it is a challenge, a demand, and Erwin looks up, teal on slate, his mouth pinched into a tight line. 

"You don't know what you're asking, precious," Erwin murmurs after a moment, breaking the gaze. "It hurts terribly. The pain may kill you, may warp your mind like it did Marie's. You might never again be my lovely Levi."

Levi refuses to let go of Erwin's wrists as he scrambles through his brain for a reason he can verbalize. Erwin's departure would kill him, assuredly, expiring of a broken heart long before starvation or dehydration came to claim him with their icy fingers, but changing is a chance for survival, a satiation for how he has come to need erwin with every cell of his body. 

"I will never hurt you, Levi. Not unless you ask me to." The words from long ago fizzle up into the forefront of Levi's mind, and suddenly he has it, has his solution. He stands up, bare, shivering, mortally human, and asks for Erwin to hurt him, to change him, to kill him if he must, because Levi would rather die here than spend a single millisecond of his life without Erwin in it. 

Erwin's eyes are wide as he looks up at Levi, the firelight casting his expression unreadable, and Levi revels in the knowledge that he has shocked him, that he has startled him, surprised him instead of the other way around.

And then Erwin laughs, a hollow sort of sound that makes Levi draw scarlet crescents in his palms, fingernails digging into the skin. 

"Oh, darling Levi," he whispers softly, reaching up to card a hand through inky hair. "You cannot possibly mean that, pet." A quiet smile traces its way around his mouth. The fleshy slits that line the sides of his neck flutter lightly, and Levi's eyes are drawn to them, ribbons of cream and scarlet, and he wants. He wants.

He wants. 

"Please, Erwin," he whispers, beseeching, dropping to his knees and clasping his hands in front of him in supplication to his god, ignoring the way his skin aches at the rough contact with the rock. "I need it." 

He crawls toward Erwin, forces himself into the cradle of Erwin's tail, offers his neck like a lamb to the slaughter. When the bites do not come, when he looks up to find Erwin staring down at him as though he has suddenly become unfamiliar and foreign, Levi's eyes narrow and he hoists himself up. His hand presses against Erwin's shoulder as he rolls them over, so Erwin is looking up at him instead. Levi's legs straddle his waist where scale meets skin. 

"Please, Erwin," he hisses. His hand can wrap around the socket of Erwin's shoulder now, and some unconscious portion of his brain stores that information away for a later date. "Please, Erwin, change me. I am begging you."

His tongue flickers against his teeth as he begs, needles and sandpaper. Erwin's eyes trace the razors in Levi's mouth with curiosity and an air of finality that borders on disappointment. Levi hates it, hates that look, and he all but leans down to press his neck against the seal of Erwin's lips, pressed tightly together. He knows that Erwin can feel his pulse, knows that it is erratic and jumpy and delicious, but why, why, why won't he bite? 

"You cannot mean this, Levi." Erwin's voice is a whisper, lips moving velvet across Levi's unmarred skin. 

"Yes, I mean it, I mean it," Levi all but sobs, pushing himself up again, drawing fingernails sharp across his neck to draw slivers of blood, four parallel lines scarlet across his skin. "Please, I love you, I want you, I need you. Don't you see?"

Erwin sighs. Surrender. Levi's eyes gleam gimlet and victorious as Erwin reaches up, places a hand firm against the back of Levi's head and draws him down. Careful, tender, defeated, hand tangled in inky hair as he draws away jagged strips of flesh in ladders high up his neck. The pain is stinging, exquisite, intoxicating with Erwin's loaded kisses, simultaneously soothing away and inflaming the burn almost as quickly as it comes. Levi is heady with the agonizing glory of it, and his eyes drift shut as moans spill forth, unbidden, from his mouth as Erwin tugs away ivory skin, chewing, consuming. Levi revels in the fact that he is becoming part of Erwin, wriggling his way beneath golden skin. 

Something wet brushes against the underside of his jaw, and when Levi's gaze travels down, he is startled to find that Erwin is crying, tears like sea glass stroking down his face. 

 


	14. Celadon

The wounds get inflamed, burning to the touch, stinging something fierce whenever Levi turns his head. His body resists the change, much to his displeasure, and Erwin has to, more than a few times, reopen the fluttering slits on the sides of Levi's neck, pressing kisses to the swollen heat of his skin as pain lances to curl molten in the base of Levi's spine. 

Levi isn't sure if it's the haze of pain coloring his vision rosy and smudged, but he thinks that Erwin's expression has taken on something like permanent concern, a thought that turns into knowledge whenever his lungs stutter closed and he is left gasping, choking for air that should be readily available to him. 

Erwin takes him into the water, then, the salt aching, stinging, pulsing into his wounds, but Levi can finally breathe, clinging on to Erwin's arm, flesh fluttering as he inhales deep, greedy, oxygen circulating sweet and briny through his blood, the seawater tangy against his tongue and throat as he forces it through his mouth and out his gills. 

Erwin smiles at him, slowly, sadly, and Levi finds his vision clearer than it's ever been above the water. He wants to stay here forever, admiring the way the water enhances Erwin's features, his beauty, feathering through silken strands of burnished gold. Erwin lifts a hand up to stroke along the side of Levi's neck, the pad of his thumb stroking along one feathery slash of skin, and Levi shudders at the eroticism of the motion, a shiver that has nothing to do with the chill of the autumn sea running up his spine and sending a riot of bubbles to the surface. 

He is hard, a heat throbbing between his thighs, and he nudges himself close to Erwin, asking shamelessly for his touch. 

"Greedy boy," Erwin murmurs, affectionately, and Levi gasps, oxygen heady through his blood, as Erwin reaches down, wraps a warm hand around Levi's aching flesh. He presses a kiss against Levi's neck, lips against feathered flesh, and Levi sobs at the sensitivity, rutting desperate into the curve of Erwin's palm. 

Erwin's free hand trails delicately up Levi's chest, tweaking at dusky nipples already peaked and pebbled against the chill, thumb depressing lightly into the hollow of Levi's throat, fingers rolling pale pink pearls between them, tugging at the sea nettle strand. 

"You are getting so big now, lovely," Erwin whispers into the seashell curve of Levi's ear, as his hand comes up to wrap itself around Levi's neck. Levi's eyes widen, hips stuttering into Erwin's hand even as his breaths come stuttered, restricted against the pressure. "My beautiful half-human." 

His grip tightens, and Levi reaches up with one hand, weakly, fruitlessly tugging at Erwin's chokehold, vision cloudy with equal parts pleasure and deprivation. He catches a breath, two, when Erwin's grip shifts, sobs out all the oxygen as Erwin's other wrist twists, the flat of his hand rubbing against the weeping head of Levi's cock with every upwards stroke. 

"Never forget who you belong to, darling." Erwin's voice is barely a whisper, but Levi hears it loudly, clearly, the syllables resonating through his head as he whimpers, breathless and silent, as Erwin gently presses a thumb to the slit, smearing slippery fluid over his skin. "You won't, will you? Promise me." 

Levi nods, his head only moving a fraction of an inch, Erwin's grasp is so tight. The world has started to become blurry, corals sparkling in his vision, and he revels in the exquisite pain as one of Erwin's fingers finds its way beneath a strip of flesh, tugging, threatening. His mind whirls at the power Erwin holds, his life held in his palm like glass, and he comes, a broken sob strangling its way out of his mouth as spurts of pearly liquid cloud the water around Erwin's palm at the same instant as Erwin releases him. 

He gasps for breath, weak and dizzy, flesh fluttering in double time to restore his oxygen levels to some semblance of normalcy. He straightens, slowly, treading water, looking up at Erwin, who has already started to swim to the surface of the cave. From below, his form is graceful, lovely in its powerful motions, and Levi craves it, craves a way to be out of this ungainly body of his. 

His mind flickers back to the razor clam shell stuffed beneath the sea moss mattress, but no. Good boys don't touch what doesn't belong to them, and he has learned to swim well with the emerald tail. 

It would be perfectly fine, except the tail is getting too tight, biting into Levi's waist, biting into his legs, and it is always a breathless squeeze to slip into the scales. 

"Erwin, do you think...I could have a bigger one?" Levi asks when he breaks the surface, just his face peeking out of the water, his gills fluttering air to him. Erwin looks down at him, peering over the side of the rock ledge, reaches out a hand that Levi does not take, enjoying the cool saltiness of the water against his inflamed skin. Not yet. 

"A bigger what, love?" Erwin asks, propping himself up on his elbows and looking down at him, so that burnished gold, slick, falls across his forehead. He is gorgeous, and he is all Levi's. The knowledge sends him dizzy. 

"A tail," Levi clarifies, once he has caught his thoughts again. "It'll be hard to swim with you the way I am now." His legs, no matter how quickly they kick, can never match up to the power Erwin has, only slow him down with their awkwardness. Erwin is sleek, streamlined, a perfection that Levi can only dream of someday grasping in his hands. 

A cloud comes over Erwin's eyes, one so remote that Levi is sure he is just seeing the reflection of the water before it passes away. 

"We will have to make one for you, sweetness," Erwin replies. "If you really are serious about this whole venture." His tone is doubtful, and it makes a seething sort of anger spill into the pit of Levi's stomach, molten. It is a foreign emotion, this infuriation, and somewhere, dim, faint, in the back of his mind, he remembers a cascade of pink and celadon sweeping across a piece of wood. He sweeps the memory away, angrily; he can't afford to be distracted by dreams just now. 

"Please, Erwin?" he asks, injecting saccharine into his voice, the epitome of sweetness. "Please help me make one?" 

Erwin sighs, breathless at the neediness fraught in Levi's syllables, and it is all Levi can do to keep the gleeful, triumphant smile from his face. 

* * *

 

Erwin begins to take Levi outside with him again, and Levi shudders at the chill of the water against his bare skin as he follows Erwin's lead, ungainly, ungraceful with his legs separate and individual, as unwieldy as the empty seaweed bag Erwin has slung over his left shoulder. The emerald tail lies coiled near their bed, no longer of use; Levi can no longer fit his hips into it, a fact that Erwin notes with some amusement and some worry. 

The light that filters down through the water now is milkier, no longer bright and golden and relaxed, and the fish that dart out to greet them from the sea grass no longer frolic quite so playfully, choosing to hide in their little burrows of sand and reef and pockets of kelp. The swells that break overhead are angrier, swollen with promise of an impending storm, and Levi notes, with some grim satisfaction, how the nets taking fish to the surface no longer bear such heavy loads of writhing cargo. 

Erwin takes his hand, drags him down deeper where the water is chillier, darkness beginning to shrug its dark fingers across their skin. The shipwreck looms in the distance, deep, dark jutting shapes of wood into the water, but Levi cannot make out any other presences nearby. 

"They have left already," Erwin explains, in regards to the absence of the other sirens. "Seeking out warmer waters and better places for more food." And pets. The words go unspoken, but Levi can hear them as clearly as he can see Erwin in the darkness. 

They swim past the shipwreck, traveling further out than Levi has ever dreamed of going before, stopping as a wide chasm opens up underneath them. The darkness is still, forbidding, and as Levi strains his eyes, he can just make out a few silver swishes here and there. He follows the line of Erwin's arm, where it tapers into a single finger pointing into the darkness. "We'll find the materials down there." He looks over at Levi, eyebrows knitting in concern. "Don't be scared."

"I'm not." Levi's words are burbled, still trying to learn how to manage his voice projection through the walls of water. He places his hand in Erwin's. He trusts, blind belief and faith weaving tighter than the strongest rope as Erwin tugs him into the darkness. 

* * *

 

His hands scrape along the side of a rock wall as Erwin drags him toward it. He opens his mouth, chill and salt pressing up against his tastebuds, to ask what he is doing, before Erwin is murmuring something soft, something under his breath that Levi can't quite catch, and a glow sparks up from through the thin skin webbing Erwin's fingers together. 

Erwin swings around, hands the softly glowing corpse of a jellyfish to him. Levi winces in preparation as the tentacle handles wrap around his hands, but much to his surprise the sting is soft, a sting of necessity, love bites in comparison to the nettle necklace tight around his neck. Small organisms dance in the center of the hollowed cap, beautiful blues and greens of bioluminescence making a light, and he holds it up to watch the hues play celadon across Erwin's face. 

His beauty takes away his breath. 

"Come," Erwin says, gently, holding up a jellyfish lantern of his own as he passes a length of wood to Levi. It looks as though it's been wrenched from the ship wreck, a baton embedded with razor sharp shark teeth that threaten to tear at Levi's flesh when he runs his thumb cautiously over them. The tip and sides of the baton are coated with them, deadly, brutal, beautiful in its visceral viciousness. "The bigger fish will yield more scales for us to use." 

Levi follows, gills fluttering, awkward in his human grace, as Erwin tugs him along to hunt. 

* * *

 

The fish down here are frightening, terrifying in their unfamiliarity, but most of them take no interest in Levi, brushing by him with icy slick flits of their tails as they move off into uncomprehending darkness in search of better prey. Erwin is never far, always within reach, plucking scales neatly from passing fish, his hands and the seaweed bag filling with silver that glows aquamarine and jade in the faint light given off by their lanterns. Levi attempts to replicate the feat, but the scales are too slick in his fingers and the fish slip away unscathed, turning gimlet eyes on Levi before drifting away. 

His attentions turn to the baton he holds in his hand. 

A lanternfish approaches, round, pupils flitting back and forth, and Levi clutches the baton firmly in his hand, readying himself. He is about to bring it down when the fish eyes him and darts away. 

Erwin laughs from beside him. "Steady now, darling," he murmurs gently, soothingly. "Have patience." 

Levi tries - patience is a virtue, but who said that? certainly not Erwin - but he can't help his frustration when the seventh passing lanternfish is suddenly snatched up by an anglerfish that yawns in front of Levi, displaying a mouth full of saber teeth open in a grimace of a grin that Levi is sure is on show just to taunt him. Rage. Fury. He brings down the baton, harsh, against the anglerfish's gills, shattering its lantern, stunning it into submission and raking scars across its face as Levi reaches out and rips scales from it, unceremoniously. Blood tinges the water with its copper, and he flickers his tongue out to taste the salt and the iron as the scales fill his hands with deep blue and green. 

"Sweet, savage boy," Erwin murmurs softly, tugging Levi away from the twitching carcass of the anglerfish, which he pushes away with a flick of his tail for others to devour. "Your cruelty is breathtaking." 

As Levi holds up the lantern to examine Erwin's expression, he swears that he sees pride there, written in the celadon shades of light the bioluminescent algae are casting across the planes of Erwin's face. Pride. Fear. Levi chooses to ignore the latter. 

* * *

 

They return ages later, when Levi's stomach is all but roaring for food, and the seas above have turned just as dark as those below. The bag of scales is bulging, scattering its silvery, bloody cargo across the rocks as Erwin tosses it up and hoists himself over the ledge, Levi following shortly after. 

He devours fish after fish, raw, stuffing the flesh down his throat. Ravenous. Erwin's fingers thread themselves through his hair, gently, nails scraping against his scalp slightly. Possessive. 

"We'll need much more than this," he says softly, tail flicking absentmindedly to curl itself, only once, around Levi's waist. "But this is a good start." 

Levi barely hears him over the crunch of bones in his mouth, barely stopping to take a breath. 

He falls asleep later that evening, Erwin's hand in its customary position tight against his throat, but wakes up suffocating. The embers of the fire are dim, and he scrabbles at Erwin's hand, desperate to escape the asphyxiation. Erwin, limbs loose and heavy from sleep, lets his hand fall away to pillow itself on the sea moss bedding as Levi quietly, stealthily, wriggles out from his entanglement and slips into the chilly water with barely a splash. 

Flesh flutters, and he takes a deep breath, two, three, savoring the taste of pure oxygen flowing through his veins, and it is in the ocean's soft and comforting embrace that Levi finds himself able to breathe again, the swells rocking him slowly and comfortingly into sleep. 

 


	15. Jade

Days pass, and the swells of the ocean grow rougher, wilder, threatening to sweep Levi away even as he clings to Erwin's arm to avoid being lost in the current. The chill of the brine is soothing against the strips of flesh lining his neck, which have finally stopped their swelling, have finally stopped their inflamed agony whenever Levi's fingers rub curious over them. Though Erwin assures him he is imagining it, Levi swears he can feel the blood vessels beneath the skin fluttering, slipping oxygen pure and sweet into his veins, and he relishes the feeling of life slipping by underneath his fingertips. 

He has become more adept at plucking the scales from passing fish, grabbing handfuls before they flick themselves away from him, his hands darting out pale claws swift through the darkness to fill themselves with silver, and he no longer has any practical use for the studded baton Erwin keeps hidden away in a cranny the rocks form in the cliff face with their jellyfish lanterns. He feigns uselessness, hiding his quicksilver speed for when Erwin is not looking, because he adores the feel of the baton in his hand, weighty and wieldy, and though these fish are not suitable to eat, he still finds himself unduly excited as the water colors with crimson spurts of blood, more inhaled than tasted. He takes deep breaths to savor the aroma of salt and copper, the most lovely fragrance he's ever experienced in his life. He wants to wear it, wants to rub carmine over ivory skin, but then Erwin turns, holding his lantern up to cast jade across Levi's face, and he has to squint and turn away because even the bioluminescence of the plankton and algae inside the jelly cap is too much, is too bright, painful against his pupils as he shies away from the light. 

He wonders why Erwin still needs the lantern; he has already shunned his, long ago, and he can still see Erwin perfectly, can still make out the shapes and silhouettes of passing fish and other monsters of the deep with perfect ease. 

Silver scales, their tips bloody from where Levi has unceremoniously ripped them out from the twitching carcasses of his conquests, litter the cave, covering every available surface with tiny ovals that reflect Levi's face a millionfold whenever he cares to look. 

He thinks he finally understands what Erwin means, when he calls him beautiful, when he calls him gorgeous, when he calls him lovely. He is, he is, he is, and even now he can hardly believe that that mesmerizing creature reflected back in the silvery scales can be him, lifting up a hand to brush away ebony hair from pearly eyes, the heel of a hand pressing up against his throat to feel how small the pearls are in his palm, straining at their nettle twine that Erwin's already had to adjust and reknot three times with new, clear tentacles that have not yet lost their sting, and Levi relishes the twinges of pain every time he turns his head to admire this new angle of his reflection. 

He tries a smile, now, flicks his tongue over razors, and sighs in narcissistic wonder. 

The scales will be knit together into a new tail for him, one that Erwin assures him will be his and his alone, and then finally, finally, finally! he will be complete, and devastating in his beauty. 

Levi can hardly wait. 

* * *

 

Once Erwin has deemed that they have enough scales - silver covers every available surface an inch deep - he pulls Levi close to him on the sea moss bedding, and Levi watches him, forehead to forehead, as Erwin explains how they'll string the scales together. Erwin's fingers fly, graceful, boring delicate holes through the centers of the scales, thumb and forefinger grasped tightly and carefully around a shark tooth sharpened razor fine, just the slightest hint of pressure and it'll draw blood. Erwin pricks his thumb, and Levi's hand wanders over, seemingly of its own accord, wrapping around Erwin's wrist thumb to middle finger and bringing his hand to his mouth, tasting the sweetest intoxication of metal against his tongue. 

Erwin pulls away, but not before Levi catches the look of consternation in his eyes. 

_Oh, have I done something wrong?_ he wonders vaguely, but the moment passes as quickly as it has come, and Erwin shrugs it off, passing Levi another shark tooth needle. Their fingers fly, together and separate, boring holes in silver scales, and Levi's reflection is disrupted, broken apart, jagged holes staring back at him wherever he looks. 

* * *

 

Levi's hands are already cramped, sore, aching, his fingers no match for the small scales he holds, on the day when Erwin gently places down the last scale and grasps him by the hand.

"Are you ready for a treat, lovely?" Erwin asks, reaching over to cradle Levi's face in his hand, thumb sweeping along the sharp plane of Levi's cheekbone. Levi nods, breathless at his reflection in the obsidian pupils of Erwin's eyes. Lovely. He finally feels as though he has grown into the name, and he accepts it with the same ease that he exhibits, slipping into the water right after Erwin. 

This time, leaving the cave, they swim in the completely opposite direction, leaving the shipwreck and the abyss far behind, heading out into uncharted waters. The waves crash, angry, far above their heads, the water choppy and angry in its autumn tempest. 

"We'll string them together," Erwin explains, gesturing out to the open water before them. Blank, blue, slate, stretching out empty before him, and Levi strains his eyes trying to see what Erwin does. Erwin smiles, a sight that Levi hasn't seen much in recent days, and ruffles his hand through inky hair as he hands Levi another woven seaweed bag. 

"Irukandji," he murmurs softly, a language Levi doesn't understand. "They told me their name once, whispering, buzzing into my ears when I was changing. Maybe they'll tell you, too." 

He swims off into the openness, and Levi can do nothing but follow. White, cloudy specks dance into his vision, and he rubs his eyes with closed fists, hard, sure that he is imagining it, but as the specks solidify, he finds them pulsing, caps dotted with moon flowers, near invisible tentacles stretching a cobweb around them. 

He looks at Erwin for guidance, cringing away from a passing jelly, but Erwin isn't looking at him, is just coaxing jellyfish into his seaweed satchel with gentle swishing motions of his tail and soft murmurs that Levi feels inordinately jealous of. Those should be reserved for him, and him alone, and he thinks that perhaps maybe he will need to have some words with Erwin. 

But not now. His legs still cast twin shadows over jellies passing by underneath him, soft melodic pulsing two steps removed from the crashing surf overhead, and Levi needs to blend them into one as quickly as possible. 

He needs this beauty, this grace, in a way that he has never needed anything before, and he sweeps jellyfish into the bag, taking care to avoid their tentacles, clear gossamer against the slate of the sea. 

But sometimes the clearest things are the most dangerous, and Levi's pearly eyes, clarity in their opacity, narrow in concentration as he herds the jellyfish into the seaweed prison. 

* * *

 

They return to their grotto, the seaweed bags bulging and pulsating soft with their fleshy cargo, which Erwin leaves floating in the seawater as he hoists himself up onto the rock ledge, Levi pulling himself up shortly after, his feet scrabbling against the wet rocks. He takes consolation in the knowledge that soon he will not need them, and soon he will be what he has always wanted to, every moment, every decision of his destiny leading up to this culmination. 

"What now?" he asks, fatigue weighting his eyelids heavy as he crawls over to the sea moss bedding, curling into it with exhaustion turning his limbs leaden. "What more is there to do?"

"Patience, pet," Erwin murmurs, but his tone is thoughtful, the purr of his syllables absent for once. "It will be painful, more agonizing than you can possibly imagine."

"Tell me," Levi demands, breathless. He attributes his disobedience and his irritation to the few jellyfish stings he had sustained that day, dotting around his ankles and thighs with painful fingers. 

"I'll sew them into your skin," is what he thinks Erwin says, but his ears are buzzing, ringing, because Erwin would never sound so uncertain, his perfect lovely god would never sound so unsure and so unsteady. It must be an illusion, but privately Levi mulls over the words, wondering what it would feel like, exquisite agony dealt in spades, scarlet staining Erwin's fingertips with himself. A curl of pleasure builds in his spine and rocks him into his dreams, and he falls so deep, so quickly, into his slumber that he doesn't notice the absence of Erwin's hand around his throat. 


	16. Viridian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The jellyfish here are Irukandji jellyfish, a small and very venomous species; some types have the ability to cause Irukandji syndrome - muscle cramps, nausea, restlessness, and may cause feelings of impending doom, among other symptoms. 
> 
> I know someone is going to ask this. "Why don't they affect Erwin?" Who's to say they don't? The story isn't told from his POV, and is told instead from the view of an already unreliable narrator whose mental state only continues to deteriorate. Just keep this in mind.

The gossamer tentacles of the jellies they've captured spill silky across the surface of the water as Erwin tentatively opens one of the bags four dreams and three nightmares later. The dreams are beautiful, rocking Levi sweetly to sleep with their promises of beauty and elegance coated in emerald and viridian, millions of reflections of him finally complete. The nightmares are equally shaded, beauty and elegance gone awry, imagined pain lancing him out of sleep, coating him in a cold sweat, and he turns to Erwin for reassurance, only to find the smooth planes of Erwin's back turned to him, the graceful wings of his shoulder blades sharp against Levi's hand. Levi curls around him then, a leg hitching itself over Erwin's tail, an arm latching itself over his chest, possessive, protective, and presses his forehead into the hollow of Erwin's back, pressing kisses to salty sweet skin until his breathing slows and he can fall asleep again. 

The jellyfish, almost corpses now, starved away, are still dangerous; Levi can tell, because Erwin hisses and jerks his hand away from the water, knotting off the bag so no more escape. He guides the tentacles through a bundle of scales, stacked up so the jagged holes in the middle align, stringing them along with a thin loop of seaweed until the fine silk stingers are almost completely covered over with silver. The jellyfish, weak, pulse lightly, fluttering along with dying breaths, and Erwin looks up at him at his perch on the rock ledge, and beckons to join him. 

Levi slips into the water without a second thought, and the stings knot through his flesh like the most exquisite of burns. He relishes it, sick, desperate, and accepts the loop of seaweed and bundle of scales that Erwin hands him. 

"Work quickly, darling," Erwin murmurs, already slipping scales onto the second of four tentacles on the minuscule jelly in front of him, squinting in the dim light of the cave as he rings silver onto gossamer. Levi wonders why; he, for one, can see the tentacles and bells of the released jellyfish, pulsing soft and slight, perfectly. "They need to eat." 

Erwin's voice is soft as he says this, purring, almost, but Levi picks up on a slight tinge of concern that darts in between his syllables, and he makes sure to watch Erwin out of the corner of his eye as he slips the scales onto the tentacles, creating strands of silver that float around them, hundreds, thousands, millions of scattered reflections, Erwin, Levi, Erwin and Levi, Levi Levi Levi Levi _Levi Levi Levi_ everywhere, and if he reaches out to caress the smooth caps of the jellyfish and relish in their halfhearted stings against his fingertips, Erwin either doesn't notice or chooses not to look, and Levi tries not to think about which choice irritates him the most. 

The voice is back, in the back of his mind, whispering, buzzing. Regret. _You'll regret this, you can't turn back, you're making a mistake,_ and he shakes his head, roughly, creating smooth slight swells in the still water with his motion and sending the silver strands bobbing wildly in his wake. The crests break against Erwin's skin, and he absorbs them, soft and pliant in the face of Levi's anxiety. 

The stringing of the scales along the gossamer tentacles keeps Levi's fingers occupied, and he is absurdly grateful for this mindless, mind-numbing activity, because the voice is growing louder, whispering harsh into his eardrums and filtering through his bloodstream, angry and demanding acknowledgment and acquiescence that Levi should not, cannot, will not give. His limbs twitch, restless, beneath the water as he strings scales, one two _three_ four tentacles on each slightly fluttering gossamer cap, unknots the bag to take out another one _two_ three four one two three _four_  

His heart thunders in his chest, juddering, hammering against the protection of his rib cage, until he feels as though the swells his shuddering limbs are producing are being magnified tenfold. From the corner of his vision, Erwin appears to be calm, far calmer than he should be, hands moving swift and steady one two three four one two three four open the bag close it _one_ two three four gossamer strands and silver scales Levi Levi Levi _Levi_ Levi a whisper a _scream_

"Are you feeling alright, lovely?" 

The voice cuts through the haze, and Levi gasps, forcing himself to focus on Erwin's face, which seems to be wavering, watery in a viridian mist that has started to creep in on the edges of his vision. The words rise to his mouth, clumsy and unwieldy syllables inside his mouth, and he spits them out, a serpent, slithery language foreign to his own ears, and is almost gratified to find surprise writing itself over Erwin's expression before being chased away by the incessant teal and emerald that threatens to overtake him. 

"Faster," Levi demands, when he can finally think of the word again. Erwin looks shaken, for reasons that he cannot bother to fathom right now. "It has to be done." He gestures to the tentacles in front of him, in the bags floating around the rest of the cave, millions of gossamer strands waiting to make him beautiful, and he finds himself itching with anticipation for the final product and the making thereof. His hands and fingers are already coated red, painful and magnificent in their suffering, the self-imposed trauma delicious against his skin, and he wants more, needs more, needs to feel the torment burrow itself beneath his skin. 

He needs the viridian to fill every particle of his being, leaching its fine color into him, because he has a sneaking suspicion that this is the only way he will be able to silence the voice whispering insistent, persistent, at the back of his mind in a language he does not understand. 

It whispers to him to _stop. Stop this madness._ Words he does not recognize, meaningful and meaningless in his incomprehension. 

He is all too aware of the weight of Erwin's gaze trailing over his skin, burning and lovely in its salience, and he revels in the attention, knowing he is rushing headlong on his way to being deserving of Erwin's full attention. His human self - and how he wants to laugh at the absurdity of that form, the form he will be abandoning soon - could never have hoped to captivate Erwin like this, could never have hoped to experience the full force of his piercing gaze on his skin, could never have hoped to live and love and laugh like this, high-pitched and hysterical echoes against the rock walls of the cave, dripping with merriment. 

But no, there isn't time for reminiscence, there isn't time to even think about the slightest hints of regret. Levi, half-finished, slots scales silvery along gossamer tentacles with reckless abandon, hands and arms scarring, intoxicated with the weight of the purpose he's been assigned, aching and desperate for self-completion. 

_When it is over, I will be beautiful,_ he tells himself sternly whenever his eyes start to droop, whenever his hands start to slow, whenever his stomach grumbles in anguish. 

Erwin sleeps three times, and wakes up from his fourth dream as Levi slips the final scale onto the final tentacle and collapses back against the rock, exhaustion filtering through every fiber of his being. But at last, the voice has stopped, drowned out by the persistent fatigue throwing midnight cloaks over his senses, and he is barely aware of Erwin hoisting him out of the water and examining the whiplash thin streaks of scarlet that decorate his hands and fingers, the most delicate marks of dedication. Levi cannot distinguish the water for the silver that coats its surface, and he allows Erwin to drag him away, allows himself to be soothed into the sea moss bedding - has it always been this cramped? - and allows himself to fall asleep to nothingness, Erwin's hand stroking gently through his hair. 

* * *

 

He wakes up after ages spent in velvet darkness, weakened, the pain in his hands more irritating and itching than exciting. Erwin has built a small fire, and the light thrown off by the flickering flames stings Levi's eyes, burning in its brightness, and he squints, holding up his hand to shield himself. 

"Eat, darling." Erwin's voice is a command, and Levi would have bristled at the tone in his voice had he not been so ravenous. With Erwin's silhouette blocking out the light from the flames, Levi reaches out, accepts the skewer of roasted fish Erwin has prepared, and lifts it to his mouth. He takes a bite, jagged and flaky, before spitting it out. 

The char is hideous, the acrid flavors of wood and smoke blending into bitterness and drowning out the taste of salt and copper that Levi has grown to love and crave so much. 

Erwin's sigh is barely audible over the crackling of the flames, before he hands Levi another fish, this one still twitching, heart still weakly pulsing, and Levi mutters a savage phrase of gratitude before lifting it to his mouth, reveling in the tang of iron against his tongue. 

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, nudging a string of bones out from between razor teeth with his tongue; they clatter and clink to the ground, rolling out of sight, and before he can lean over to scoop them up, Erwin is already picking them up, small, white, in the palm of his hand. He reaches beneath the sea moss bedding for a few jagged pieces that have bounced under, and this time, there is no mistaking the storm that gathers over his eyes as he tugs out the clam shell, holding it up for Levi's inspection. 

"And what were you planning to do with this, pet?" Erwin's voice is dangerous, and it sends shivers, excited, aroused, down Levi's spine, pupils dilating with savage pleasure. "Dare I ask?" 

"I was going to give you myself," Levi hisses back, triumphant, gleaming at the way he can look Erwin in the eye now. "All of it, since you wouldn't take it for yourself." He gestures to his legs, vestigial and milky, pale and wanting. Hideous. Erwin's eyes narrow, thunderclouds breaking in his eyes, and Levi has to hold his breath because he has never seen Erwin look more beautiful, gorgeous and terrifying in his fury.

"Don't be mad," he murmurs, beseeching now, injecting sweetest honey and sea nettle into his syllables. "I just wanted to be the best I could for you, Erwin. Don't you love me?" 

Erwin turns away, the clam shell still clutched tightly between his fingers, brooding. 

"It's not supposed to be like this," he mutters, and Levi privately agrees; they should have undertaken this transformation a long time ago. "I should drown you and have it over with." 

Levi's heart skips a beat at this, but he tells himself sternly to calm, to be placid. He can't die, not like this, because he loves and needs Erwin too much to slip into the afterlife without him, corpse drifting ragged and milky and - _this is what really horrifies him_ \- incomplete, unborn. 

"You wouldn't dare." His words surprise even himself, and he bites his tongue, tasting delicious copper spiced with pain, at his insolence. 

Erwin sighs, shoulders slumping forward, and Levi half thinks to himself that he has never seen Erwin so small, so weak, so susceptible like this. It is a frightening change of pace, and, more terrifying still, he finds that he adores this velvet vulnerability. 

Erwin half turns to look at him over his shoulder, and Levi is drunk on the intoxication he reads deep in Erwin's pupils. Erwin loves him, Erwin wants him, Erwin needs him, and Levi has to stifle the smile he feels bubbling up from his heart. 

Erwin indicates a softly twitching kelp bag by the fire. "Eat. You'll need your strength," and though he doesn't beseech, he doesn't command, either, and Levi shrugs as Erwin slips back into the water with the smallest of splashes, leaning over to unknot the seaweed twine of the satchel, pearls straining against his jugular as he lifts life to his mouth and swallows sustenance. 

Erwin's whereabouts no longer concern him, because the voice is whispering soft in the back of his mind that Erwin will be back, will undoubtedly be back, and he thinks that for this time only, he can afford to listen. 


	17. Variscite

 

"Hold still now, darling." 

Levi is twitching with anticipation and the foolish oddity of nerves fluttering queasy in his stomach and tingling up his spine. Erwin's fingers skirt around the swell of his hipbone, musing, tracing skin and flesh soon to be swallowed up by silver, and Levi thinks for a moment that Erwin looks regretful, looks regrettable. 

But no, that is silly. He has wanted this, they have wanted this for so long that it seems childish and redundant to pull out now. 

"I'll miss seeing your sea cucumber all the time," Erwin murmurs, Levi's cock soft and fleshy in the curve of his palm, and Levi has to bite down on the inside of his cheek, savoring the salt tang of metal against his taste buds as he fights away the prickling, teasing hint of arousal that threatens to work its way through the pit of his stomach. "You're truly lovely like this, my dear. Are you sure you don't want to stay this way?" 

Levi shakes his head, pearls clicking together along their length of sea nettle. It is an absurd question, and he hates himself for even considering it. His answer should be instantaneous, should be silver slick and quick in the affirmative towards transformation, but his mind lags, alternative trains of thought pulling out of the terminal and shooting out, branches and tendrils sweeping across his mind with the fated whispers of 'What if, what if, what if,' that he tries desperately to quash with his half-murmured promises of a better future drenched in emerald and elegance.

He can see it now, fluttering gossamer and graceful, the sweetest of transitions from blue to green, the sapphire coil of Erwin's tail into turquoise, teal, variscite, the most precious of gemstones in the slow slip into emerald. He adores it, craves it with an animal desperation that stuns him and fits him perfectly, winding its savage way through his limbs and lending him an aura of finesse, lovely in its utterly inexplicable cruelty. 

He had never before thought himself capable of such beauty, and yet, the thought is blasphemy, because he is Erwin's and Erwin has made him like this, gorgeous in his image and perfection written in the infinitesimal pulses between his heartbeats. 

"Well, I'll certainly miss it," Erwin murmurs, his voice lost amongst Levi's thoughts, but his motions aren't, as he leans forward, head bent between Levi's legs, to press a kiss to the soft flesh between them. Against his better judgment, Levi feels a shudder worming its way up his spine, sensitivity heightened by inactivity. He has been far too busy and preoccupied with the incessant desperation to drive himself to completion that his body lags behind, needs and wants and desires muted and muffled. 

He lets his head loll back, pearls straining against the hollow of his throat, as Erwin reaches down, lower, cradling slowly-stiffening flesh in the soft fleshy warmth of his throat, razor teeth skirting delicately around the skin that Levi is forsaking, has already forsaken somewhere in the back of his mind even as his hips roll up of their own accord to bury himself, to burrow himself, farther into the soothing warmth of Erwin's mouth. Erwin swallows around his burgeoning flesh, and he groans, the sound echoing around the cave, a measure of his own neediness, and he threads a hand through Erwin's hair, fisting gold between his fingers. Erwin does not complain, save for a short, little irritated murmur when Levi's fingernails scratch against the darker roots at his scalp, just a little bit too roughly; the vibrations from his grumbling spill over into Levi's skin, and he gasps, exquisite pleasure, pure and rich, trembling through his veins and flooding him with ecstasy untempered by his hedonistic crave for the agony that only Erwin's hands and body can give him. 

He is all too aware of Erwin's eyes skirting along the underside of his jaw, is all too aware of that way Erwin's tongue is doing something delightfully sinful to flesh that has grown firm and sticky under his ministrations, is all too aware of how the razor points of Erwin's teeth scrape delicate across his skin, just this side of pleasurable one second, just this side of painful the next. 

Erwin pulls off with a soft, sucking pop, and Levi is about to open his mouth and beg him for more, before he realizes what Erwin is trying to do, and his eyes narrow in suspicion.

"You don't want me to change," he says, disbelief clouding every syllable of his voice. "You want me to stay like this." It isn't a question, but it isn't a statement, either, a halfway point between the two, and Levi hates the way weakness coats the spaces between his words, measured, clipped. 

Erwin tilts his head back to look Levi in the eye, the swell of his lower lip smudged silvery, and Levi has to shove away further thoughts from clouding his mind and his judgment, has to resist the temptation to press himself back into warmth and heat, between the plush slickness of Erwin's lips. 

"It would be nice," he admits, his hands already pressing Levi's legs apart and hooking them over his shoulders. Levi cannot help but admire the way his thighs cradle Erwin's head, perfect size, perfect shape, and relishes the vision, knowing this will be the first, the last time, he will ever have the opportunity to see Erwin like this.

Well, not unless, a voice buzzes somewhere in the back of his mind, but he swats it away, cutting it off before it can finish, irritated. The decision has already been made, and he will not renege on his promises, not to himself and not to Erwin. 

"But you've already made up your mind, I can tell." Erwin arches an eyebrow at him, and Levi only nods in the affirmative, his gasp sounding hoarse in his throat as Erwin leans down again to press a kiss to flushed, aching flesh. Levi's ankles hook together, left over right, his heels pressing into the small of Erwin's back as his hands bury themselves in Erwin's hair again, tight, tighter, pressing him down as his hips roll up into the welcoming warmth of his mouth. 

The orgasm leaves him dizzy, cresting with a shout of surprise, an unexpected riptide of ecstasy tearing its way through the pit of his stomach, spurting silver into Erwin's mouth. He sobs, hands curled into fists, barely away of the way Erwin winces as his hands knot tight in his hair, pressing down, suffocating, asphyxiating. Erwin releases him, pressing a kiss that feels suspiciously like a farewell, against slowly softening, sticky skin, and Levi is breathless, spots flickering in and out of his vision, at the intensity of it; he can hardly catch his breath, and he rolls onto his side on the sea moss bedding, watching lazily, his eyelids heavy, as Erwin strokes the side of his thigh absentmindedly, a distant look in his eyes. His expression isn't one that Levi's seen before, a cross between concern and a cold determination that has Levi this side of worried, because surely Erwin isn't going to leave him, surely not, they've come too far for that. 

He wouldn't dare. 

He drifts off into velvet dark dreams, and wakes up to the suede crimson of a nightmare. 

* * *

 

He wakes up to the tang of blood heavy and rich in his nostrils, and he sits up, stomach growling, ravenous already, licking his lips, chapped and cracked beneath sandpaper tongue, in anticipation. His eyes flicker around the cave, searching the water, still silvered over with scales and gossamer tentacles, before settling on Erwin, whose back is to him, shaking and shivering. As he listens, carefully, beneath the rush of blood pounding to his head, Levi can hear agonized, choked off groans, the brutal snicking of sharps through scales. 

Curious, he slips himself stealthily off the moss bedding, walking carefully heel toe to where Erwin is sitting at the edge of the rocks, his tail dangling over into the water. 

His breath hitches in his throat at the sight he catches over Erwin's shoulder, illuminated perfectly in the dim light of the cave. 

Erwin's right thumb and forefinger are clenched around the clam shell, knuckles white, as he uses the razor edge to shear through skin and scale. The seamless join of his torso and his tail has been rendered separate, and Levi can make out the disjunction, the lip of the tail peeling away with every tug and every bite of the clam shell through flesh, blood staining the sapphire. 

"What are you doing?" he asks, horrified, fascinated at the way the cerulean peels away to reveal milky flesh, pale from lack of light, wasted away from disuse. Why, he thinks to himself over the terror pounding rampant behind his eardrums, Erwin is just like him! 

His thighs are scarred, gossamer disappearing beneath the skin, and Erwin sobs a curse, his teeth grinding together as he tugs a tentacle out, channeling its silky way beneath his skin until it slithers out, weak and defunct, to curl at Levi's feet, stained slimy with blood and weakness. 

"No, stop, Erwin," he hisses, all but begging, as he kicks the tentacle into the water. The jellyfish below pulse, slow, soft. Interested. Silver shimmers at the promise of food. "Stop it, right now." 

Erwin isn't listening to him, eyes focused and intent, agonized, cutting away himself. 

"Stop!" Levi's shriek echoes around the stalactites, and Erwin finally, finally, finally turns to look up at him, sapphire eyes glazed over, his legs - his legs? - half in, half out of his tail, vestigial and weak and useless. Levi wants to scream at the terrifying hideousness that Erwin has revealed, but he struggles to control himself, because it is still part of Erwin, everything is, everything has been, even the sickly pale legs half-unshelled, even the remnants of a horrifyingly bone-white sea cucumber between his thighs, scarred and bulging with the outlines of tentacles below the surface of his skin. 

Levi retches, falling to his hands and knees with a thud, pain jolting itself up through the heels of his hands and his kneecaps as he collapses onto the rock, gagging into the water, where the jellyfish have started to group around the tentacle Erwin had pulled out of his thigh. 

God, no, no, no, he thinks, unable to tear his eyes away as Erwin grasps the end of another string of blue scales, tugging with hissed curses and snarls, blood and gossamer and scars. 

"Stop," he begs in earnest now, sobbing, tears salt against his tongue. "No, no, no more." He crawls over, snatching away the clam shell. "You can't, you can't, Erwin! You'll kill yourself!" 

Erwin leans over, trying to grab the shell back, but Levi holds it up, scuttles backward, out of reach, tears turning his vision blurry. 

"I'm doing this for you," Erwin grits out. "I'm going to turn back for you. Now give that back." 

"No," Levi hisses, curling the razor shell close. "I won't let you. I love you, I can't let you do this." The last words are sobbed, desperate, and he feels he's going to go mad as Erwin snarls at him, feels he's going insane already as he watches Erwin's fingers wrap themselves tight around another strand of azure scales, tugging vicious, violent, every jerk and yank spurting another hiss of blood into the water and across the stones, heavy and acrid and cloying with its metal sweetness. 

Erwin shudders, a shout tearing itself out of his throat as he yanks this tentacle free, letting the lapis fall into the water, and, belatedly, Levi realizes that Erwin no longer needs the razor shell to harm and to wound. 

Erwin's fingers are wrapped around another strand when Levi runs - no, sprints - over, knocking him to the ground, a harsh scream tearing itself out of his throat, animal and terrified, as he wraps his hands around Erwin's throat, squeezing, desperate. 

"I love you," he sobs, even as Erwin struggles beneath him, weakened, hand scrabbling limp against Levi's, gills fluttering madly beneath Levi's fingers. "I'm doing this for you." 

Levi doesn't relax until the instant Erwin relaxes underneath him, hand falling away, eyes slipping closed. His heartbeat running ragged in his chest, he holds his breath, presses his ear to Erwin's chest, is horrifyingly relieved to find faint pulses still thrumming through his flesh. 

Now that Erwin isn't an active force in his destruction any longer, Levi takes a moment to eye the residual damage Erwin has left behind. Blood still leaks, dribbling from channels cut through sickening milky flesh, but Levi looks at it, not aesthetically, but from a purely clinical standpoint, all too aware of the fact that beauty is not gained without agony. 

The scale-strung tentacles overlap slightly, the gossamer burrowing channels into Erwin's skin, rooted deep over time, purple, red, silver scars spotting over Erwin's flesh where the skin has been cut open for the channels. Levi studies it, carefully making note.

"Be a good boy, Erwin," he says, laughing, crazy, now that the fear of losing him has dissipated away. He scuttles back over to the sea moss bedding, scoops up the razor shell, taking temptation, and slipping into the water. The jellyfish shine gossamer and silver around him. Soft. Slow. Interested.

 


	18. Envy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> envy is usually associated with the color green?

 

The pain is exquisite, beautiful and breathtaking in the agony it shoots through Levi's veins like the most incandescently ecstatic of poisons. His sobs echo wildly around the cave, and he can no longer tell where his voice begins and where the echoes end, can no longer tell if they are whispers of pleasure or murmurs of panicked pain. Perhaps a bit of both. 

He has cut channels through his flesh, carving away strips of ivory and cream and scarlet that flutter away in the water and are snatched up by millions of slowly pulsing mouths. The stings drive him mad with the burn against his exposed nerves, bleeding and bloody, staining jelly caps like floating poppies in the water as he winds the tentacles through the grooves he has carved into his skin, silver swallowing up skin. 

And, it is utter madness, he knows, but he thinks he can hear them whispering to him, tiny voices buzzing away behind his eardrums, murmuring their names and how delighted they are to see him. His hands fall slack on occasion, his head tilting back into the water as he takes one deep breath, two, ribbons of skin fluttering with his exhalations; luckily, the jellyfish seem to know what to do, seem to sew themselves neatly and effortlessly into his skin with just the vaguest bit of prompting from his fingers. 

He has dragged Erwin into the water, also, and takes glances over to ensure that he is still breathing, to ensure that he can still see the faint fluttering of Erwin's gills.

"We won't let him die," the jellies whisper in his ears, and he takes their word for it, though Erwin has not opened his eyes in the longest time, though his limbs still float, limp, half shelled, hale pale and half cerulean. Levi has already braved the stinging tentacles against his fingertips to wind them back through the deep ruts in Erwin's skin, deeper, deeper, gossamer into arteries and veins until the blue is laced with silver strands. It doesn't look quite right, but it looks elegant all the same, and it sends a shudder up Levi's spine to know that he has laid claim to Erwin even in this most basic form. He thinks that Erwin has never before looked so beautiful, and the jellyfish whisper in his ears their tacit agreement and implicit understanding. 

Erwin wakes up, spluttering back up to the surface just as Levi is coiling what remains of his legs up underneath him so he can reach to thread silver through his ankles. He watches, with bated breath, as Erwin's eyes, bleary with fatigue and weakness, rove over his form, new and just this side of complete. 

He hears Erwin take in a deep breath. 

"God, Levi." 

The two words send his head whirling, spinning, dizzy and giddy with the knowledge that he has rendered Erwin speechless and incapable of thought, beauty whispering through his limbs like the most potent of vanities. 

"What have you done?" 

"I've become beautiful," he says, laughing now, the echoes chasing his giggles, intoxicating. "Don't you like it?" He flicks his tail, sending his nerves afire with the tingling of the tentacles burrowed slight beneath his skin. Despite his best efforts, they refuse to burrow deeper, refuse to slide themselves neat and gossamer into the pulsing channels of his veins, refusal that he does not understand until they whisper in his ear that he is not ready yet, that he is not yet done growing and their brothers and sisters will return with the next autumn swells to clothe him in silk and gossamer again. 

"I..." Erwin is at a loss for words, gaze weighted against the swollen, stung red line that marks off the place where Levi's waist disappears into silver. His eyes seem to pierce through the silver lining, seem to search out for the seams of Levi's legs, limbs that have all but disappeared, their outline only vague and reminiscent of his humanity below the rippling pearly surface. "Yes," he admits finally, the syllable forcing its way past the barrier of his throat, as though he is reluctant to acquiesce, something that Levi cannot understand at all. This is what he wanted, isn't it? This is what they wanted, together, and he had hoped Erwin would wake up and look at him with eyes pleased and proud and tell him how lovely he is. 

He swims over, and how lovely it is, the pull of the water against his skin without the drag of his legs behind him. Levi slots himself neatly into the crook of Erwin's arm, pressing soft kisses to Erwin's neck as he does so, and tries not to notice how it takes Erwin a few moments to wrap his arm around his shoulders. 

* * *

 

He still swims slowly, getting accustomed to the speed and power his new form offers him, and he spends ages outside the cave eating, exploring, snatching fish from the swirls of the current to bring back to Erwin. Erwin is still weak, still recovering, and Levi wakes up some mornings to find that the tentacles of silver haven't stayed in the mold of Erwin's tail, little dribbles of blood staining the sea moss a deep crimson that leaches onto the pads of his fingers when he applies just the slightest bit of pressure to the spongy surface. He smiles, clicks his tongue, and weaves them back in, ignoring Erwin's soft hisses of pain and the way Erwin looks at him when he licks his fingers clean of the scarlet. 

He dives into the water, headlong, the sea accepting him into its chilly arms with soothing kisses against the swollen ring around his waistline. He has never before felt so natural, never before felt so connected, the millions of tiny pulsing mouths against his skin nibbling away for nutrients and whispering soft words of encouragement when Erwin fails. 

"Pet."  
"Gorgeous."  
"Darling." 

Words that Erwin no longer says freely, his syllables splattered with reluctance, his eyes coated with a film of nostalgia that sickens Levi. He finds that with every passing day, hoisting himself out of the water, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery rocks, becomes easier, becomes more effortless, and he clings to these new talents and skills of his own with a fervor and intensity that just manages to drown out the soft swells of disappointment that rumble through Erwin's chest whenever his fingers roam over the seam of Levi's skin and scale that becomes more flawless with every passing day. 

"You've changed so much, darling," Erwin sighs one evening, his tail flicking listlessly from side to side; Levi uncoils his from its curl beneath him to twine with Erwin's, and is heartened to find that Erwin no longer pulls away, blue and silver interlocked. Erwin looks contemplative in the low light of the cavern, and Levi takes a moment to study his face, the way his jaw curves down into the smooth column of his neck, uninterrupted as it flows down like water into his torso and his scales. It is perfection, and yet, Levi can't help but feel that it is lacking, some how, some way. 

It doesn't occur to him until Erwin rolls over that night in sleep, his hand falling across Levi's neck in a reminiscence of old memories that he stumbles upon the answer. 

* * *

 

The millions of tiny pulsing mouths against his skin whisper to him that they want color, that they want fragrance and delight in their ornaments, and Levi cannot help but comply, spending ages in forests of sea grass and kelp, fish peeking curiously out at him before darting away from his grasping claws, outstretched and predatory. He rubs his tail, the sharp edges of the scales razing through the plants and rubbing chlorophyll onto their slick shiny surfaces, dying him with malachite and emerald and lime. 

Erwin does not comment on the change in hue, save for his remark that the color suits Levi very well. 

"This shade of envy becomes you," had been his exact words, his hand roaming delicately over the coils of Levi's tail, wrapped around his own. Silver, blue, green, silver, blue, green, silver blue green silver blue green in an alternating interlaced pattern of infinity. Levi had been inordinately proud of the way Erwin's fingers had threaded through his hair, soft and tender, and it had taken all of his restraint to stop himself from showing Erwin the long strand of sea glass, frosted white and green and absinthe, that he's been scavenging from the remains of the shipwreck, scouring through the sand and the detritus. Erwin does not ask him where he goes during the days, and Levi takes it as a sign of implicit trust and faith that he will return. 

He shows him now, though, pulling out handfuls of sea glass, the edges smoothed and rounded from time and their tumbles in the soft murky sand of the ocean floor. 

Erwin looks at them, blue sweeping over the jade and crystal filaments piled in Levi's hands, their smoothness a sharp contrast to jagged claws and scarred fingers from the kisses of the jellyfish, biting bittersweet silvery trails across his skin. 

"You'll wear these, when I find an appropriate thread." It is not a question, not an inquiry, but a statement, and Erwin hears the definitiveness of Levi's tone. 

He takes a breath, gills fluttering, unsteady, unsure, and nods. 

"Alright then, darling. If it will please you," he murmurs, and, gleeful, Levi snatches a kiss from Erwin's unprotesting mouth, triumphant as he presses Erwin down into the sea moss bedding and presses rough and intoxicating kisses against lips that have gone slack and sweet with acceptance and surrender.

 


	19. Jasper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See: Chapter 6 - Azure.
> 
> also, you can stop reading here if you want, because this is my personal "official" ending scene for the story. Thanks for reading!~ 
> 
> If you choose to continue, there are a few more chapters for you by popular request. Additionally, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of eruriren, stop reading at this ending.

 

The sea grows stormier still, and Levi's blood itches with anticipation, a desire to strain and swim against the currents to warmer waters. The fish have grown scarcer, migrating away, and hunger swells in his stomach, simmering angry beneath his skin. Nothing is enough, and no matter how many times he fills his mouth with the tang of copper and brine, bones crushing against the insides of his cheeks, he needs more, craves it with a fearsome intensity so brutal that he finds he has to bring Erwin along with him because he can no longer bring himself to fetch food back for him. Fortunately, the coral reefs are still teeming with life, fish of all colors, trusting and accepting and swimming right into Levi's open jaws without any prompting, and it is there that Levi finds his inspiration for the sea glass piled on one side of the cave. 

He watches, bated breath, as a lionfish skirts by Erwin's arm, maroon and scarlet and cream, drifting lazy towards the shelter of the rocks, and he is struck by how lovely it looks. The contrast is breathtaking, and Levi is awestruck with the way the stripes on the lionfish's belly mimic the shade of the scabs forming around Erwin's waist and below the dip of his tail. Healing, slowly but surely, and though Erwin still lags behind when Levi pulls him out of the cavern, Levi can tell that it is not so much out of pain as it is out of reluctance. 

As if he feels Levi's gaze on him, Erwin shivers, a ripple starting at the base of his tail and traveling up, shimmering sapphire, up up up as it tingles through his spine, and Levi follows it with hungry eyes, tasting the tremors with his tongue. The water is cold, running silky chilled fingers through their hair and across the planes of their bodies, and Levi aches to be swept away in the currents to warmer shores that mean food and safety and growth. Surely Erwin must feel the same, because whenever they lie curled up together in the sea moss bedding that is no longer big enough - Levi's tail keeps flopping over the edge and coiling on the ground - he can sense the tension in the curve of Erwin's spine from where it rests against his chest. 

"Sweetness," he croons softly, voice soothing like the ocean's calm, "we'll leave soon, I promise, just as quick as you get better. We can't leave like this." 

Erwin nods, his face turned away from Levi, and Levi grins, razor mouth and sharp smile, as he wraps his tail around, over, beneath Erwin's and slings an arm neatly over Erwin's shoulders. They fit so well like this, and though Levi occasionally reminisces about earlier days when he would curl neatly into the hollow of Erwin's body, he figures that this is just as good if not better. 

That night, he slips out while Erwin is fast asleep, eyes flicking slow and subtle beneath his eyelids as he is rocked into his dreams, sliding into the water with barely a splash. Graceful, a finesse that he has been intoxicated by. Power, as he propels himself out of the cave, each flick of his tail becoming more natural by the minute as his shadow sweeps a deeper black over the sandy ocean bed. Beauty and elegance, and he seeks more and more of it as he fights against the current, pulling himself toward the coral reefs. 

He stills as he flicks past the first outcrops of coral, reds and oranges and yellows muted by the night, but he can make out their branches, lovely and delicate and ready to offer up their secrets if he so much as breathed a desire to know them.

Motion. To his left. His eyes flick over, pearly, pearlescent, as they scan disinterestedly over a tired gobi making its way home to its sandy burrow. No. Not that. That won't do. 

His eyes rove over the corals and the sandy hollows, picking out the planar forms of stingrays lying burrowed beneath their blankets of sand, barbed tails peeking out, a warning against trespassers. Levi skims down, trailing his fingertips over the velvet back of one of them, and grins as it ruffles up in indignation, peeking up at him with beady eyes, before deeming him unthreatening and settling back down beneath the sand. He wants to laugh at its foolishness, wants to reach down and scoop it out of its slumber, rip off the barb, stinging in his hands, blood in the water, copper against his tongue - 

No. He shakes his head, small vibrations in the water. Focus. Erwin's skin isn't made for the deep-set ebony that the ray's tails are painted with. The golden flesh needs scarlet and cream and maroon, demands it, and Levi thinks that this is the least he can do, helping a god achieve perfection. 

He loves Erwin too much to pass up this opportunity. 

His eyes flicker restlessly over the corals and rocks until he focuses on a lumpy shade pressed into a rocky hollow, almost hidden from view save for the spikes wavering gently in the ocean's swells. 

Careful, slowly, letting the current carry him gently over so as not to alert the stationary lionfish, Levi readies himself, preparing for the agony that will shoot up his arms and limbs, for the pain that Erwin has warned him against. But stings are no stranger, poison is his closest friend, and he opens his hand, fingers stretched wide, to bring it down against the lionfish's body, rough, sweet and intoxicating. 

The lionfish struggles, fins and spikes waving wildly and scraping over Levi's forearm and hand, and he bites at the inside of his cheek, savoring the pain as he presses his fingers against the fish's gills. It struggles, frantically, fluttering beneath his fingertips, and Levi has to curl his hand tighter, scales rough against the palm of his hand, to keep himself from laughing out loud at the beautiful desperation of its thrashing, until slowly, slowly, slowly it stops, wild jerking motions swaying to a stop. 

He manages to harvest eight perfectly long, uncrushed spines from the lionfish, ripping them bleeding from its back before allowing its corpse to be carried away in the current, a drifting lumpy shape trailing ink stains of copper through the dark water. The spines, pearly and maroon, go into a knit seaweed bag that he draws tight against his back, the palm of his hand stinging horrendously, the pain already half forgotten as his eyes flicker around the reef again. 

He has already decided that one thread is not enough. The simple pearl choker he wears around his neck, straining tight against his jugular, is lovely in its elegance, knotted tight with sea nettle, but Erwin deserves something far more grand. 

Levi would cover him in scarlet and cream, but he also adores the way Erwin's golden skin carries the sucking purple blotches from his mouth whenever he nips, possessive, at Erwin's flesh, leaving violet and crimson circlets across the planes of his skin. Erwin wears them well, the most exquisite forms of jewelry, and Levi would not deny him that. 

* * *

 

"What have you been up to? You've been gone quite a while, darling," Erwin asks the next afternoon, when Levi hoists himself out of the water, dripping, the seaweed bag bulging with lionfish spines hanging from his shoulders. 

"Here, look," Levi says, excitement overriding the numbing throb in his hand as he fumbles to unknot the bag, spilling spines all over the cave floor. Erwin's eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, but Levi knows he is pleased, beyond measure, he must be. 

"Oh, lovely," Erwin murmurs softly, slipping down onto the rocky floor to examine the spines closer. "Your poor, darling hands." He reaches out for Levi's wrists, but Levi pulls back, batting him away. His hands can wait, but the smooth golden planes of Erwin's torso are lacking, and he tells Erwin to go and rest some more while he finishes up his necklace. 

* * *

 

"Let me put it on for you," Levi murmurs a few hours later, and Erwin, much to his delight, obliges, turning his back to him and allowing him to drape the sea glass around his neck, where it sits cold and smooth and jade in the hollow of his throat. He has bored through the pieces of sea glass with the trusty razor clam shell, hours of effort scraped away into perfectly smooth hollows that he has threaded a long scarlet spine through, which now rests against Erwin's skin. Erwin hisses slightly, but doesn't look down, doesn't disrupt Levi's work, and Levi smiles at how good he is. 

"I know, sweet, it hurts, lionfish usually do," he whispers, soothing balm as he presses a soft kiss to the wing of Erwin's shoulder blade. "But it seemed such a shame to mar your beauty with a seaweed twine. This is much more elegant, much more deserving of you." 

Carefully, carefully, with his other hand, Levi lowers the rest of the necklace onto Erwin's torso, spines knotted in the infinitesimal gaps between the pieces of sea glass to hang down in a lovely fringe across Erwin's torso, scarlet cream gold scarlet cream gold. Erwin gasps, beauty and pain, and Levi quickly maneuvers around so that he is facing Erwin, so that he can see the way the golden skin has already started to sting and mar crimson. 

He swallows, roughly, the pearls bobbing against his throat. Erwin is gorgeous beyond compare, beautiful beyond measure, and he drinks in the sight with relish. 

Tears stroke down Erwin's face, lovely silver trails that Levi soothes away with long, tender strokes across the planes of his cheeks and wiping away tears that threaten, dangling, at the tips of his eyelashes. Erwin sobs, breathless, pressing kisses against the swollen and inflamed palms of Levi's hands, and Levi is awestruck by his perfection. 

"You are mine." It is not a question. 

Erwin nods, barely, but Levi can still see it in the way the fringes of the collar stroke down for the briefest moment before dipping back up as Erwin lifts his face to look at Levi, watery oceans against stormy swells. 

"Thank you," Erwin murmurs, sincerity coloring his every syllable with jasper. 

 


	20. Absinthe

 

Erwin heals, eventually, tortuously, slowly, but Levi exercises the utmost patience, because it is the very least that Erwin deserves, despite the itch deep in Levi's blood and bones screaming at him to follow the schools of silver fish towards warmer waters. Erwin deserves this much, and he does look so lovely with that lionfish fringe rubbing swollen against the golden plains of his torso. Levi almost regrets it, just almost, because the Curacao guilt roiling around in the pit of his belly is drowned out by the roaring absinthe spilling crystal hot through every vein and every artery at the look Erwin gives him when Levi loops a stinging finger through the maroon and cream dorsal fins, triple banded, looped around Erwin's neck, strung with jade and quartz filaments of sea glass. 

It is a look that Levi has come to crave, sweet submission and awestruck wonder, wide-eyed and lovely, and Levi luxuriates in the weight of Erwin's gaze traveling over his limbs and over the sleek coil of his tail. The tentacles have settled in nicely, sealing the scales tight to Levi's skin, tracing his heartbeat, and it almost doesn't hurt anymore, pain singing the open ends of Levi's nerves until they accept agony as normalcy and he can ignore the Irukandji sing like fire inside his bloodstream, reaching to a part of him that not even Erwin has touched before. The thought is almost erotic in and of itself. 

Levi has finally grown into his own, and he adores it with an intensity only rivaled by the unfettered love he carries for Erwin, a flaming torch held firm in the pit of his heart, flaring to life with sparks and embers curling delicate in the bottom of his belly whenever Erwin turns his face to return a kiss. The flame of his ardor burrows heated beneath his skin, a maddening, frustrating human arousal that irritates Levi beyond belief, fire trapped, no outlet, sizzling heated and heavy, simmering and overflowing into the impassioned kisses he presses into Erwin's mouth and against his skin. 

He presses Erwin into the sea moss bedding, reveling in the way Erwin bares his neck for him, gills fluttering against the tender press of Levi's fingers questing against his pulse. Kisses suck themselves into Erwin's mouth, heated and intoxicating, and Levi can't get enough of the taste of Erwin's mouth, slick and salty and delicious against his tongue. He delights in the soft stuttering, sputtering moans Erwin lets out against the seams of their mouths, soft puffs a sweet contrast to his own ragged breathing. 

Erwin undoes him every time, unraveling him expertly with aqua eyes and the soft slick curl of his tail against Levi's, stronger and surer with every passing day. Levi shudders now, as Erwin trails his palms over the planes of Levi's back, soft against the wings of his shoulder blades, rubbing soothingly over his heaving sides and the small of his back, dipping into the arch and swell of Levi's skin, a curious set of fingers tracing soft and gentle along the seam of Levi's skin and scales which is fusing together, more and more natural with every passing breath. Erwin's eyes never leave Levi's face, coring him, piercing him through, wide open for inspection, and Levi bares his soul freely, every cell straining for Erwin. Intense, intoxicating, and Levi craves the feeling of surrender almost as much as he yearns for the sweet taste of dominance, heavy against his tongue, the flavor thickening with every second he has Erwin pinned beneath him. 

Lost in a kiss and his own heated thoughts, Levi doesn't notice Erwin shifting beneath him until the other siren rolls them over, shifting the balance and cradling the back of Levi's head in one broad palm to save it from the rocks slick and cool against his back as he looks up to find himself drowning in the lapis of Erwin's irises, more beautiful than any ocean swell. The fringe of Erwin's lionfish necklace tickles as it trails across the clenching, twitching plains of Levi's stomach, as Erwin leans over him, hands pressed on either side of Levi's head, kissing smooth burning paths through Levi's skin. 

Levi's hands tangle in the burnished gold of Erwin's hair, swallowing moans that make the strips of skin flicker along the lines of Levi's neck, scarlet against the soft press of Erwin's fingertips. He tries to press Erwin down, lower, lower, but Erwin catches his wrists in one hand, pinning them above Levi's head as he stretches, luxurious, over Levi, shadow blotting out the already dim light of the cave. Levi tries, and fails, to stifle a gasp as Erwin's tail coils around his own, strong, sleek, powerful, in contrast to the fragility he instills in Levi once again. 

"You don't have it anymore," Erwin murmurs, reminding him, razor mouth nipping at the seashell curve of Levi's ear. His free hand trails down to the seam of skin and scales, dips just a bit lower and Levi, delirious and drunken with the promise of remembered ecstasy, lifts his hips up obligingly for Erwin's questing hand, only to feel nothing, a sort of stroking numbness, the gentle pressure of the heel of Erwin's hand against his tail. 

"I...What?" he asks, confused, before remembering. He rescinds his question, recants it, frowning to himself and scolding himself for being so needy and selfish and hedonistic, because Erwin has never left him wanting, waning, and he deserves far more gratitude than Levi is giving up. 

"There's still time toundo it, you know," Erwin murmurs, seductive whispers running their sticky slack syllables up the trail of Levi's spine, settling and bubbling in the pit of his belly. "I'm sure the Irukandji will understand." His fingers dip, gentle, barely there, into the lips of Levi's tail, and Levi gasps, wanting, wanton, at the newfound sensation, almost painful in its pleasure. 

"No," he hisses, his conviction half shaky even to his own ears, and he despises himself for it all the more. "No, no." He wriggles his wrists in Erwin's grasp, breaking free of those most erotic of fetters, the most suffocating of manacles. "I want to be with you." 

"And you can be, sweetness." Erwin's words are wheedling, cajoling, dripping with the honey of slick promise, but Levi fights against it, resists temptation. "We can fix this. Come on, now, love." 

Levi shakes his head frantically, furiously, pushing at Erwin's chest, palms beating staccato against the beat of Erwin's heart. Erwin has made him in his image, lovely and deific, and Levi will be damned if he gives this up, and so he cannot, not even for Erwin. 

"I want to be like you, too," he amends, fighting away the queasy sense of heat bubbling foreign in the pit of his stomach. "Beautiful." 

The weight of Erwin's gaze has him guilty, and he shrugs away the puncture of Erwin's eyes by slipping into the water, cool and soft and sweet against his skin. It numbs the terrifying inferno inside him as he slips out of the cave to hunt. 

 


	21. Emerald

 

The currents carry them away, graciously, gracefully, the ebbs and flows of the silent silky slipstreams of the water caressing over and around their limbs. Levi slips into the tides, grasping Erwin's hand, fingers locked in the most intimate of embraces. 

They know each other all too well, hands laced perfectly together, and Levi clutches tight, because, for all his self-assuredness, Erwin still knows the waters of the ocean far better than he does, and getting lost would mean wandering around endlessly, forever, abandoned. Levi shudders at the very thought, and Erwin murmurs a soft soothing aside that is nearly drowned out by the burbling babble of the current rushing past Levi's ears. 

Blue surrounds him, drowns him, and he holds on to Erwin for salvation and as a reminder that he belongs here. The light is milky, grey, filtering through the swells high above them, painting Levi's scales with a silky emerald that he adores as he turns and rolls, silverfish, in the current to admire its slick, sleek grace, tangled with the blue overlaps of Erwin's tail, wrapped soft, comforting around his, interwoven with silver. 

He is whole again. He has been made complete, one half of an entirety, and Levi waxes divine infinities and praises for whatever change of mind that has caused Erwin to love him again, to whisper sweet nothings soothing to the summit of his soul. Lovely. Darling. Sweetness. 

Erwin accepts him, almost reluctantly, almost regretfully, but it is an acceptance nevertheless, wrested out of him with kisses and promises and the all consuming need that has Levi tugging him towards the open blue of the ocean to ride the currents into the next chapter of their lives. 

Erwin tugs him closer, to speak into his ear, soft sibilant syllables pressing into his eardrums over the soft roaring of the water that embraces them. 

"Are you happy?" 

Is he happy? What a foolish question. Of course Levi is, how can he not be, everything that he has ever wanted, ever dreamt of, ever dared to try to reach for has been accomplished. He is audacious, tempts fate and nature, and he has won. Of course he's happy. Beyond happy. 

Levi is ecstatic. 

"Yes," he says, simply, truthfully, trying to put meaning and punctuation on the word so that Erwin can try to understand the depth of his joy. "Yes, darling, I am." 

"Truly?" erwin asks, squinting down at him. The lionfish necklace, the fringe that marks erwin as his own, rubs up against Levi's chest, striping it with scarlet and swollen, but it is a small price to pay for erwin's love and acceptance and devotion. Levi wears the marks with pride. "Truly, lovely Levi?" 

Levi nods emphatically, the pearls around his neck bobbing up and down. 

"Why? Are you not?" he asks now, the thought occurring to him, quicksilver as it slips through his mind. 

Erwin smiles, carefully, cautiously, and Levi can almost see the truth written at the tip of his tongue. He holds his breath, waiting. Anticipating. Tense. 

"Yes, pet. I'm happy, too." 

He exhales, bubbles spilling out his mouth and his gills fluttering madly in the soft tug of the current as his body works, unconscious and desperate, to replace the missing air. 

It is a lie, but Levi chooses not to listen. 

Happiness is just a state of mind, and Levi is utterly entranced, completely fascinated. He's happy. Isn't he? 

* * *

They spend days in the current, drifting, sleeping in the rush, occasionally propelling themselves forward to hasten the journey. Levi's eyes drift upwards, towards the surface, more often than he would like, more often than he would like to admit. 

The ocean is open, a book of blue pages, and they scrawl through it like invisible ink, leaving only the most minute of traces that they have been, that they were, that they are. And, even though Levi has Erwin, holds him carefully like a treasured gem in and against the palms of his hands, the question Erwin has asked him reverberates around his head, the syllables ringing against his skull and haunting his silver slick dreams with their doubt and confusion. 

The water turns warmer, degree by soft degree, and the hunger in the pit of his heart grows fierce. Fiercer. Starving, famished, ravenous for something, for something else, for something more. Something that he can't quite quantify and place into words, but he has an idea, something to bring back the intoxicating sparkle of Erwin's eyes. 

The thought blooms emerald in his mind, grows, branches, until Levi is swimming desperately with the current, quickly, quickly, muscles aching. He needs Erwin to trust him, needs him to love him, love him, love him again with every fiber of his being, needs to be worshipped and worship in return. 

The current ejects them softly, abruptly ending in unfamiliar waters that taste sweet against Levi's tongue, filling his mouth with brine neat and spiced with life. The emptiness of the open ocean is long past, and it is refreshing to find signs of other sirens here, as well, shipwrecks with tethered pets tied by a wrist, by a waist, by an ankle, awaiting their masters' returns, the soft, subtle flickers of silver and pearl and amethyst and the weight of piercing opal eyes watching from the shadows to evaluate the newcomers. Long oval dark shadows dot the surface of the water here and there, casting darkness on the sandy ocean floor.   


Levi wonders if Marie is here, wonders if Nile has accompanied her. They will be so delighted to see me like this, beautiful as I am, he thinks to himself with a small smile as he follows Erwin, who is propelling himself lazily through the tall lawns of sea grass growing on the ocean floor. The green all but swallows him, and Levi gasps softly. Erwin is gorgeous like this, more than words can quantify, and, though the water is warm around his limbs, a chill runs down his spine, tingling through his tail and making the silver green scales shimmer with its rippling. 

Yes, he thinks to himself, satisfied. He knows exactly what Erwin needs. 

* * *

 

The grotto that Erwin has made his is cleverly disguised with a soft blanket of sea nettles and seaweed that leaves Levi's fingers stinging with exquisite agony fresh and neat as he parts the curtain to gain entrance. He makes a mental note to restring the nettle twine of his necklace because it is getting worn, and has all but lost its sting, just the vaguest of twinges against Levi's neck, and, truthfully, he misses it sorely. Craves and chases the remembered burn desperately. 

This grotto has only a tiny shelf above the water, and Levi's eyes are drawn to it instantly. It's minuscule, but he thinks that it will do. The rock walls of the grotto are slimy with lichen and sea moss, and Levi frowns as he traces a finger through the slick green. No. This won't do, not at all. He'll have to clean it. 

He waits that night until Erwin is done eating, letting his eyes drift closed. Pretending, stilling his breaths and waiting, waiting, soft, steady. When he opens his eyes again, Erwin is resting against one of the rock walls, treading water. Peaceful. Relaxed. 

He dares to lean forward, dares to reach out and stroke a hand through seaweed soft blonde hair, dares to snatch a kiss from the corner of Erwin's slack mouth, velvet smooth against his own. 

"Yes, I know just what you need," he murmurs softly, syllables soft and comforting. "You'll be my good boy, won't you?" 

He imagines that Erwin nods, just the slightest bob of his head against his hand, and Levi grins, razor mouth and pearly eyes, as he slips silkily, silently, out of the grotto, turning his eyes to the surface once again. 

 


	22. Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. Thanks for sticking it out, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
> 
> For other works, you can check me out at misayawriting.tumblr.com, or just through my AO3 profile~
> 
> Because I said this was gonna be made public information, now that you've reached the end of the work, did you notice the chapter titles? They mirror the power shift in the relationship :)
> 
> (Also, hi Vivian, it's Amanda)

 

Eren Jaeger is, and always had been, leading a dangerous life, toeing the line between extremities and normalcy with an ease that terrified his friends and his family. The wanderlust had followed him heavy in his blood, ever since that one night where he'd fallen asleep on the couch, childhood innocence drawing his eyelids down heavy, and had woken up just in time to see his father leaving for what would be the last time. He had pressed tiny starfishes of outstretched fingers to the window, the frost melting underneath his fingertips, and had watched his father drive away without so much as a backwards glance. 

His mother had been crying in the bedroom, a soft susurrus of a sound that swelled like the ocean waves at dusk, and Eren had wanted to cover his ears, had wanted to run as far away from the noise as possible, deadly and beautiful, before the ebb and flow of the small swells turned into a riptide. 

He had been running ever since. 

His passport boasted a frighteningly large number of stamps, entry in and out of so many countries and places that eren couldn't even begin to remember all of them. A blur of languages, a blur of odd-end jobs, just enough for another plane ticket, another third-class berth on a train, just enough to keep running and keep escaping into the shadows of the world. 

And maybe he was looking for his father, a small shred of hope dwindling down and flickering to cinders with every passing year. 

He had met her in Paris. He had handed her her cafe au lait over the counter, and had been entranced by how the steam curled around the delicate curve of her chin, the soft choppy waves of her dark hair, how it seemed to twine elegant into the crimson scarf she wore like a slash of statement and color in the grey slurry of the world. 

Her name was Mikasa Ackerman, and he had been besotted, almost instantly. For the first time, Eren found that he wanted to stop running. Or, at the very least, that he wanted to stop running alone, because the itch of the wanderlust had twined itself through every fiber of his soul and he no longer knew what it meant to settle. 

The morning of November 18th found Eren Jaeger holding out an envelope to her in the grey light of milky morning. Inside the envelope were two plane tickets to the West Indies, seeking out warmer weather in the tropics. 

Mikasa had looked at him, looked at the plane tickets, and had sighed and reached for a cigarette on her nightstand. The smoke had burnt the inkling of eren's hopes into ashes, and, without another word, he had sunk into the doldrums of his life again, leaving before she had a chance to because he had made a promise to himself that he would never be the one to be left by. Never again. 

* * *

 

The afternoon of November 19th finds Eren Jaeger sitting on the soft white sands of a beach in the West Indies, frowning out at the soft aquamarine swells of the water and trying to ignore the aching emptiness beside him where Mikasa should have been. He doesn't need her, he decides, he doesn't need anyone. 

But, like any of us, he still needs to see and be seen and marvel at something he's never experienced before, and so, with the last few hundred dollars in the bottom of his satchel, he asks around and enrolls himself in a scuba diving class. 

It's foolish, foolhardy, but Eren can't forget the way Mikasa smiles as she's waking up, eyelashes fluttering like birds across the planes of her cheekbones, and he can't forget the way she says his name, testing out the syllables against her tongue. 

The soft susurrus of the ocean's waves calls to him, sweet and endearing and a balm against the ache in his heart. He craves it, chases it, longs for it with a fervor every passing day that he spends inside getting used to the rental scuba equipment and practicing dives in the indoor pools set aside for those purposes. 

But, no matter how many times he sinks below the surface of the water, staring up at his instructor's and classmates' faces rippling into nonexistence and blurred realities, he can't get her face out of his mind. 

* * *

 

"One last dive," he begs the instructor the evening of November 25th, hands clasped in supplication. "Just one more." He longs to lose himself in weightlessness, the water splashing soft against his ears, rippling muted and nearly drowning out the sound of her voice. 

The instructor sighs, but helps him fasten his equipment again, and, with two slick splashes, they spill into the ocean's waiting arms. 

Eren strains his eyes to see, but the water is dark now, waiting, biding its time until the morning, and he can barely see his hands in front of him, let alone the murky form of his instructor, an oval darkness descending with him, bubbles flickering up wildly to the surface as he breathes. 

Something brushes against his leg, something large, something slick that Eren can't name, something that has a curl of fear licking itself into existence in the pit of his stomach. He welcomes it, greets the pounding surge of adrenaline pulsing through his heart like an old friend. 

It wraps around his ankle, curious, strong, and Eren tugs away, trying to jolt out of its grip, because despite the fact that the bottom of the ocean seems like the last repose without his mother's sobs and without Mikasa's disappointment, Eren doesn't want to die. 

It rips the oxygen mask from his face, and his eyes widen, spluttering, flailing like he's not supposed to do, milky skin, dark hair, dark eyes - Mikasa? - as water fills his lungs and he slips into the grateful darkness of eternity. 

* * *

 

And then he wakes up, body rolling itself over and gagging up the brine of seawater. Once the world has stopped swaying madly around him, he gets to his knees, winces as he bangs his head on slick stone. His wetsuit is gone, flippers and oxygen tank and the other rental equipment disappeared, and Eren's first panicked thought that makes its way through the fog of his brain is that he doesn't have any money to pay for replacements. 

And then his heartbeat settles, slow, slowly, slower than he would like. Perhaps he is already dead, perhaps he has spent so long imagining the inevitable that now that it's finally come he can't recognize it for what it is. But, if this is Heaven, it is nothing like he's imagined it from the soft stories of his mother's voice. If this is Hell, well, perhaps it is. 

And then, a voice. Two, timbres and pitches twining melodious in his ears, so beautiful and so breathtaking that he manages, for a split second, to forget the way his name sounds on Mikasa's tongue. 

"Isn't he gorgeous?" 

"What a sweet, lovely gift you've given me." 

The rich sounds send tingles racing down Eren's spine that have nothing to do with his current state of nudity. 

Hands gleam, milky, murky, far larger than they have any right to be, clutching clawed fingers at the edge of the rocks, and, tentatively, holding his breath, Eren creeps over, leans forward to examine the water, where slicks of blue and green wait for him with open arms and razor smiles. 

 


End file.
